2025/08/06 by Milner, William R., Milner, Richard G.
#Atomic Physics (physics.atom-ph) #FOS: Physical sciences #Instrumentation and Detectors (physics.ins-det) #Nuclear Experiment (nucl-ex)
paper · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2508.06561
Unravelling the internal structure of hadrons and nuclei in terms of the quarks and gluons of Quantum Chromodynamics is a central focus of current nuclear physics research. Directly observing gluonic states in the nucleus would be groundbreaking and is an objective of the future Electron-Ion Collider (EIC). Over thirty years ago, Jaffe and Manohar identified a new double-helicity flip structure function, directly sensitive to exotic gluons. They pointed out that this could be measured in inclusive high-energy electron scattering from a transversely polarized nuclear target with spin I ≥ 1. Here, we identify the spin-3 nucleus boron-10 as a particularly interesting system to search for exotic gluons. Leveraging technical advances in atomic physics over the past decade, we outline an experimental scheme to directly optically pump a beam of stable boron atoms to polarize the nuclear spin. Technical challenges to realize a spin-polarized beam of boron-10 in the EIC are discussed. The proposed scheme will also polarize the 11B nucleus, which could significantly enhance the pB fusion cross section.