ePIC

ePIC (electron–Proton/Ion Collider) is an international collaboration bringing together scientists with the shared goal of understanding the internal structure of matter. The ePIC detector is planned to be constructed at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL, USA) and is expected to begin operation by the mid-2030s. It will operate at the Electron–Ion Collider (EIC), a next-generation facility delivering polarized electron and proton or ion beams across a wide range of collision energies.

Designed to fully exploit the unique capabilities of the EIC, ePIC will provide ultra-high-precision three-dimensional images of quarks and gluons inside hadrons. These measurements will shed light on how quarks and gluons contribute to fundamental hadron properties, such as mass, spin, and spatial structure. By enabling unprecedented access to the dynamics of the strong interaction, ePIC will play a key role in advancing our understanding of quantum chromodynamics (QCD) and in addressing open questions related to color confinement—one of the most challenging problems in modern nuclear physics.

The Pavia group works on:

• Analysis: Semi-Inclusive Deep Inelastic Scattering studies, with particular interest in Transverse Momentum Distributions (TMDs);
• Detectors: R&D for the Silicon Vertex and Tracking (SVT) detector of the ePIC Collaboration;
• Theoretical studies: support activities for simulations on TMDs.