Electron-Ion Collision Environment: Distribution of Quark Spin and Orbital Angular Momentum

Abstract

The future Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) will enable measurements of the same partonic distributions inside both the proton and the nucleus through electron-proton (eP) and electron-ion (eA) collisions. This capability motivates the present theoretical study of the distributions of quark spin and orbital angular momentum within the proton and the nucleus. To map the eP and eA collision environments, we employ the Nambu--Jona-Lasinio (NJL) model at finite nuclear density to determine the constituent quark masses at zero nuclear density and near the nuclear saturation density. Using these quark mass inputs, we calculate the generalized transverse momentum-dependent parton distributions (GTMDs) associated with quark orbital angular momentum (OAM), spin, and spin-orbit correlations within the light-front dressed quark model. Furthermore, inspired by the nuclear suppression factor widely used in heavy-ion collision experiments, we introduce a set of GTMD ratios between eP and eA collisions. Any deviation of these ratios from unity provides an indirect measure of many-body nuclear density effects arising from non-perturbative quantum chromodynamics (QCD).