QED nuclear medium effects at EicC

Abstract

We evaluate quantum electrodynamics (QED) nuclear medium effects under experimental conditions at the future Electron-ion collider in China (EicC). We consider neutral-current and charged-current elastic scattering, as well as neutral-current and charged-current deep inelastic scattering. We compute cross-section corrections at first order in the opacity expansion and estimate kinematic modifications due to multiple rescattering within the nucleus. We perform the first calculations of charged-current deep inelastic scattering and polarized scattering. We present results for the anticipated $^{197}_{79}\mathrm{Au},~^{208}_{82}\mathrm{Pb},$ and $^{238}_{92}\mathrm{U}$ nuclei and extrapolate these calculations to the lighter $^{40}_{20}\mathrm{Ca}$ isotope. We find that QED nuclear medium effects are non-negligible when extracting the process-independent non-perturbative structure of nucleons and nuclei at the EicC.