With the asymptotic freedom, QCD has been extremely successful in predicting and interpreting phenomena in high energy scattering experiments. While no one questions the validity of QCD as a fundamental theory of strong interactions in the Standard Model, our understanding of QCD remains incomplete. In this talk, I will argue that the proposed Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) with its unique capability to collide polarized electrons with polarized protons and light ions at unprecedented luminosity, and with heavy nuclei at high energy, could be a most powerful microscope as well as a tomographic scanner able to precisely image gluons and quarks inside the proton and nuclei. This precision microscope will allow us to “see” and explore the dynamics binding gluons and quarks together to form hadrons, and to search for clues of color confinement - the defining property of QCD. The EIC will be able to address the most compelling unanswered questions in QCD and hadron physics, and to take us to the next QCD frontier.

Argonne Physics Division Seminar Schedule