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Probing the Proton using Heavy Flavor at the Electron-Ion Collider

SMU has partnered with colleagues at Jefferson National Accelerator Laboratory and the University of California at Riverside to investigate the physics potential of reconstructing and identifying heavy flavor (charm and bottom) quark-initiated jets at the planned Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory. My personal interest is in the use of heavy flavor production at such a collider to probe the sea quark content of the proton itself. I hope that such work can illuminate the structure of the proton and provide new constraints on assumptions used in interpreting the Large Hadron Collider data, especially during the high-precision phase of the LHC in the 2030s.

Learn more about the planned EIC: https://www.bnl.gov/EIC/

By Stephen Sekula

Professor of Physics. Department Chair. Higgs Hunter. Computational Physicist. Ph.D. from University of Wisconsin-Madison. B.S. from Yale University.