Unlocking the Secrets of the Nucleus at the Electron-Ion Collider (EIC)

All of the visible matter in our universe exists due to the interactions between quarks and gluons, which comprise protons and neutrons (collectively: nucleons), and allow them to bind together to form atomic nuclei. These interactions arise due to the strong nuclear force, described by Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). There are many open questions in QCD which require precision measurements of deep-inelastic scattering (DIS) on protons and nuclei to answer, such as: 1) how do the quarks and gluons inside hadrons give rise to their overall spin?, 2) how do the QCD interactions inside protons give rise to their mass?, 3) what is the internal spatial structure and distribution of quarks and gluons inside of the nucleons?, 4) what happens to the number of gluons inside a nucleus at relativistic energies - does it eventually "saturate"? With the goal of answering the above - and many other - open questions in nuclear physics and QCD, in January of 2020, the US Department of Energy officially green-lit the Electron-Ion Collider (EIC), which will be the best tool to answer these questions in QCD. This facility will be constructed at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) in partnership with Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility. Building on the existing infrastructure of the Relativistic Heavy-Ion Collider (RHIC) at BNL, the EIC will be the first machine capable of colliding polarized electrons with proton and light-ion beams, and of colliding electrons with heavy-ion beams, all over a broad range of center-of-mass energies. In addition, the EIC will operate at incredibly high luminosities up to 10^34 cm^-2 s^-1, enabling access to statistically challenging measurements inaccessible in previous DIS experiments. In this talk, I will introduce the physics of the EIC and the relevant experimental technology required to achieve the science goals of this new facility. Additionally, I will discuss what can be achieved with current data from RHIC (and why it is important for the EIC) as we transition to the EIC era over the next decade.