Self-consistent determination of proton and nuclear PDFs at the Electron Ion Collider
Rabah Abdul Khalek, Jacob Ethier, Emanuele R. Nocera, Juan Rojo
Abstract
We quantify the impact of unpolarized lepton-proton and lepton-nucleus inclusive deep-inelastic scattering (DIS) cross section measurements from the future Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) on the proton and nuclear parton distribution functions (PDFs). To this purpose, we include neutral- and charged-current DIS pseudodata in a self-consistent set of proton and nuclear global PDF determinations based on the NNPDF methodology. We demonstrate that the EIC measurements will reduce the uncertainty of the light quark PDFs of the proton at large values of the momentum fraction $x$ and, more significantly, of the quark and gluon PDFs of heavy nuclei, especially at small and large $x$. We illustrate the implications of the improved precision of nuclear PDFs for the interaction of ultrahigh energy cosmic neutrinos with matter.