In summer 2021, data analysis will likely conclude on an experiment searching for decisive proof of the chiral magnetic effect.

The EIC will build on the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider, which will soon produce major results of its own. Kharzeev and Jinfeng Liao / Nature Reviews Physics The CME induces an asymmetry in the emission of positive and negative hadrons along the axis of magnetic field. An illustration of the hadron angular correlation pattern in the (x-y) plane transverse to the beam axis z in a heavy-ion collision. It will also offer insights into the spin of fundamental particles.Īschenauer will give status updates from the first year of the EIC project-a collaboration between BNL and Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility-and an overview of its experimental equipment.Įxperimental measurements of the Chiral Magnetic Effect (CME). Like a CT scanner for atoms, the EIC will let scientists see how force-carrying gluon particles hold together quarks, the internal components of protons and neutrons. The accelerator and detector will serve as a kind of camera, taking 3D images and movies of electrons colliding with polarized protons and ions. “The scientific advances of the EIC will help us all to understand where we come from and how the visible matter around us is composed from its elementary building blocks,” said Aschenauer. Meanwhile, planned accelerators could run on sustainable energy, a drastic departure from today’s machines.Īt a press conference during the 2021 APS April Meeting, researchers will discuss how cutting-edge accelerators could collide with both energy consumption and our assumptions about the nature of matter.Ī powerful new facility for nuclear physics Forthcoming data from the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider could finally detect the elusive chiral magnetic effect. The EIC isn’t the only Brookhaven project poised to reshape nuclear and particle physics. “We have the technology to build this unique particle accelerator and detector to do the measurements that, together with the underlying theory, can for the first time provide answers to longstanding fundamental questions in nuclear physics.” “All the stars aligned,” said Elke-Caroline Aschenauer, Brookhaven National Laboratory Staff Scientist and a leader in developing the EIC plans. When the Electron Ion Collider received the go-ahead in January 2020, it became the only new major accelerator in the works anywhere in the world. Studying how those quarks recombine to form composite particles will inform our understanding of how today’s visible matter evolved from the QGP studied at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). Electrons can “pick out” individual quarks from the protons that make up nuclei. The collisions will produce precision 3D snapshots of the internal arrangement of quarks and gluons within ordinary nuclear matter, like a combination CT / MRI scanner for atoms. Electrons colliding with ions will exchange virtual photons with the nuclear particles to help scientists “see” inside the nuclear particles. The Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) will probe the internal structure of nuclear matter as it exists today.

Accelerator particles