QCD studies and precision physics at the LHeC

Abstract

The Large Hadron electron Collider (LHeC) would add a high-current Energy Recovery Linac to the HL-LHC, delivering electron-proton collisions at centre-of-mass energies around the TeV scale. This contribution summarises the QCD and parton-distribution-function (PDF) aspects of the recent LHeC bridge-project study. The combination of high luminosity, a very large lever arm in Bjorken $x$ and $Q^2$, and clean neutral- and charged-current deep-inelastic scattering measurements would enable a coherent determination of all proton PDFs in a single experiment. The resulting constraints would substantially reduce uncertainties in the gluon, valence, strange and heavy-flavour distributions, provide stringent tests of perturbative and small-$x$ QCD, and improve the parton luminosities that enter precision and discovery measurements at the HL-LHC and at future hadron colliders. The same programme gives competitive and complementary determinations of the strong coupling and weak mixing angle, including measurements of its running over a wide range of scales.