Heavy Quark Production at an Electron-Ion Collider

An Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) with center-of-mass energies √s_e N ∼ 20-100 GeV and luminosity L ∼ 10³⁴ cm^-2 s^-1 would offer new opportunities to study heavy quark production in high-energy electron or photon scattering on protons and nuclei. We report about an R&D project exploring the feasibility of direct measurements of nuclear gluon densities at x >∼ 0.1 (gluonic EMC effect, antishadowing) using open charm production at EIC. We describe the charm production rates and angle-momentum distributions at large x and discuss methods of charm reconstruction using next-generation detector capabilities (π/K identification, vertex reconstruction). The results could be used also for other physics applications of heavy quark production at EIC (fragmentation functions, jets, heavy quark propagation in nuclei).