Probing Nucleon Spin Structure with a Polarized Gamma Beam from Compton Backscattering at FCC-ee

Abstract

We present a kinematic and optical design of a high-energy polarized gamma-ray facility based on Compton backscattering of lasers against the FCC-ee electron beams in its $Z$, $WW$, $ZH$ and $t\bar{t}$ modes. The conversion point is located in the FCC-ee full-energy booster, allowing parasitic CBS operation without dedicated interaction-point optics. Saturating the safe value of the kinematic parameter $κ= 4.35$ in each mode fixes the laser wavelength and yields backscattered photons up to $ω_{\max} = 148$~GeV. The facility operates in a parasitic mode with Compton fraction $f_{\rm CBS} = 10^{-8}$ per bunch crossing, preserving the nominal FCC-ee collider luminosity; the corresponding operational laser pulse energies are in the millijoule range. Polarized photon selection is performed event-by-event via a pair spectrometer that reconstructs $E_γ$ on the high-energy Compton edge, delivering circular polarization $|\langle S_{2}\rangle| > 0.99$. We project the resulting sensitivity to the polarized gluon distribution $Δg(x)$ through open-charm photoproduction $γp \to c\bar{c}X$ on an NH$_{3}$ dynamic-nuclear-polarization target, including next-to-leading-order QCD corrections via $K$-factors and propagating polarized-PDF uncertainties through the $100$ Monte Carlo replicas of NNPDFpol2.0. The projected total precision on $Δg(x)/g(x)$ is $δ(Δg/g)_{\rm tot}\simeq 1.8$--$3.0\times 10^{-2}$, a factor of $\sim 4$--$7$ smaller than the total uncertainty of the most precise existing direct world measurement (HERMES, dominated by Monte-Carlo model uncertainties), with four distinct values of $\langle x\rangle$ in the medium-$x$ region $0.07\leq x\leq 0.19$. The proposed facility would set the dominant constraint on the polarized gluon distribution in the medium-$x$ region, complementary to the low-$x$ reach of the Electron--Ion Collider.