Extracting the partonic structure of colorless exchanges at the Electron Ion Collider

Abstract

We investigate the determination of the partonic structure of colorless exchanges in deep inelastic diffractive $ep$ scattering at the Electron Ion Collider, using the standard decomposition into Pomeron and Reggeon contributions. We perform fits to simulated diffractive cross section pseudodata in four variables, including the momentum transfer $t$, to estimate the achievable precision on the Pomeron and Reggeon quark and gluon distributions. We analyze the influence of different cuts in the kinematic variables, beam energy configurations and luminosities, including a `first year' scenario. We conclude that the EIC will be able to constrain the partonic structure of the sub-leading Reggeon exchange with a precision comparable to that of the leading Pomeron exchange.