A TeV Muon-Ion Collider at BNL and its Physics Potential

The development of a TeV-scale muon accelerator and storage ring provides enormous scientific potential not only for a mu+mu- collider, but also for deep inelastic scattering in a completely new regime when a TeV muon beam collides with a hadron beam. For example, if the approved Electron-Ion Collider at BNL were eventually upgraded with a TeV muon beam replacing its low-energy electron ring, a Q² reach of up to 10⁶ GeV² is accessible and a parton momentum fraction x down to 10^-5 can be probed. This coverage is equivalent to that of the proposed LHeC. Therefore, such a facility is of great interest to both particle and nuclear physics communities.

We report on studies of the physics potential at such muon-ion colliders that could be realized at the BNL facility. In particular, we discuss that the sensitivity to very low values of x will allow a careful study of the expected region of gluon saturation in proton and nuclei. And we believe MuIC has the potential for precision QCD measurement. We also examine the potential for F₂ structural function studies in muon-proton collisions through calculations of the production cross sections for different x and Q².