Title:Physics and the Status of the Electron Ion Collider : The next QCD Frontier

Speaker: Abhay Deshpande (BNL)

Abstract: Despite many decades of experimental and theoretical effort and progress, many fundamental and profound questions in Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) remain unanswered. All relate to the role gluon plays in QCD. For example, despite 50+ years of studies, we still don’t exactly know how they contribute to the mass and the spin of the proton. In case of nuclei, we still don’t quite understand the exact quark-gluon origin of the nuclear forces. Some of these relate deeply to fragmentation, hadronization, color confinement & such crucial accepted but not fully understood aspects of QCD. QCD as we know it, predicts the existence of a rather exotic gluon dominated matter at extremely high (gluon) density. Whether such gluonic matter exists needs experimental confirmation followed by a detailed study. I will review such topics at a high level and present an overview of recent progress in accelerator and detector development in the EIC Project.