Abstract
There are currently several proposals to build a high-luminosity electron-ion collider, to study the spin structure of matter and measure parton densities in heavy nuclei, and to search for gluon saturation and new phenomena like the colored glass condensate. These measurements require operation with heavy-nuclei. We calculate the cross-sections for two important processes that will affect accelerator and detector operations: bound-free pair production, and Coulomb excitation of the nuclei. Both of these reactions have large cross-sections, 28-56 mb, which can lead to beam ion losses, produce beams of particles with altered charge:mass ratio, and produce a large flux of neutrons in zero degree calorimeters. The loss of beam particles limits the sustainable electron-ion luminosity to levels of several times $10^{32}/$cm$^2$/s.
Highlights
Electron-ion colliders have been proposed as a means to study the structure functions of polarized protons and to probe the quark and gluon distributions of heavy nuclei [1,2]
bound-free pair production (BFPP) leads to a single-electron ion, while Coulomb excitation leads to neutron emission and/or nuclear breakup
A nucleus is excited, typically to a giant dipole resonance (GDR); the GDR usually decays via single neutron emission, leaving a slightly lighter ion, plus a neutron [3]
Summary
Electron-ion colliders have been proposed as a means to study the structure functions of polarized protons and to probe the quark and gluon distributions of heavy nuclei [1,2]. These studies require high electron-ion luminosities, so as to be able to probe reactions with low cross sections, near the kinematic limit in x and Q2. Other reactions, with large cross sections, may occur copiously enough to cause significant beam loss.
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