Tackling the kaon structure function at EicC

Abstract

Measuring the kaon structure beyond the proton and pion structures is one of the hot topics in hadron physics, as it is one way to understand the nature of Nambu-Goldstone boson of QCD and to see the interplay between the EHM mechanism and the HB mechanism for hadron mass generation. In this paper, we present a simulation of the leading $\Lambda$ baryon tagged deep inelastic scattering experiment at EicC (Electron-ion collider in China), which is engaged to unveil the internal structure of kaon through Sullivan process. According to our simulation results, the suggested experiment will cover the kinematical domain of $0.05\lesssim x_{\rm K} \lesssim 0.85$ and $Q^2$ up to 50 GeV$^2$, with the acceptable statistical uncertainties. In the relatively low-$Q^2$ region ($<10$ GeV$^2$), the Monte-Carlo simulation shows a good precision of the measurement ($<5$\%) for the kaon structure function $F_2^{\rm K}$. In the high-$Q^2$ region (up to 50 GeV$^2$), the statistical uncertainty of $F_2^{\rm K}$ is also acceptable ($<10$\%) for the data at $x_{\rm K}<0.8$. To perform such an experiment at an electron-ion collider, a high-performance zero-degree calorimeter is required.