Prospects for early heavy-quark measurements at the EIC

Abstract

We assess the prospects for inclusive heavy-quark-pair electroproduction in electron–proton (ep) and electron–nucleus (eA) collisions, alongside double-charm-pair (\(D^0 \bar{D}^0\) and \(D^0D^0\)) electroproduction in ep collisions, during the early operational phase of the Electron-Ion Collider (EIC). Based on the anticipated beam energies and luminosities of the EIC, we estimate the total cross sections and differential distributions for photon virtuality \(Q^2\), heavy-quark transverse momentum, and rapidity. This analysis evaluates different Bjorken-x (\(x_\textrm{Bj}\)) intervals across a range of \(Q^2\) values. Expected event yields are estimated from the projected integrated luminosities of the early science programme, demonstrating the substantial improvement in statistical precision over previous HERA measurements at moderate and large \(x_{\textrm{Bj}}\). For electron–nucleus collisions, we compute the nuclear modification ratio \(R^{e\text {A}}\) within collinear factorisation using nuclear parton distribution functions, and identify the kinematic regimes in which shadowing, anti-shadowing, and EMC-like suppression are accessible with early EIC data. These results are intended to serve as a parton-level baseline to support feasibility studies and to provide a reference for future higher-order theoretical and experimental investigations at the EIC.