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Abstract The Electron–Ion Collider (EIC) offers a unique environment to study kinematically controlled lepton–nucleus ( $e+A$) reactions, where a primary hard scattering is followed by an intranuclear cascade and the subsequent statistical de-excitation of the nuclear remnant. Utilizing the Benchmark eA Generator for LEptoproduction model, we demonstrate that event-by-event fluctuations in nucleon removal and energy deposition populate a diverse ensemble of excited remnants. Furthermore, we show that varying the target mass systematically shifts the distribution of these remnants across the $(N,Z)$plane. Although this excited prefragment remnant is not directly observable, its properties are shown to be strongly correlated with final-state fragments; specifically, the largest nuclear residue and the intensity of evaporation yield serve as effective experimental proxies for event-level remnant characterization. We also evaluate photon observables essential for nuclear spectroscopy. While various photon sources overlap significantly in pseudorapidity, we find that in the nucleus-rest frame, the low-energy spectrum is dominated by de-excitation $\gamma$rays and exhibits distinct discrete structures. These findings motivate an EIC research program that correlates rare-isotope production and de-excitation radiation with well-defined initial conditions, providing a collider-based approach to nuclear spectroscopy that is complementary to existing fixed-target facilities. 

We present measurements of the total and differential cross sections for near-threshold $J/\psi$photoproduction obtained with the CLAS12 detector at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility. The results are based on data collected during the fall 2018 and spring 2019 running periods, using electron beams with energies of 10.6 and 10.2 GeV, respectively, scattered off a liquid-hydrogen target. Near-threshold $J/\psi$photoproduction offers a unique sensitivity to the strong interaction in the nonperturbative regime of quantum chromodynamics (QCD). The energy dependence of the cross section constrains the underlying $J/\psi$production mechanisms, including multigluon exchange and potential baryonic excitations. Additionally, the $t$dependence of the differential cross section can be related to the transverse spatial distribution of gluons in the proton, providing critical input for theoretical descriptions of the gluonic structure of the proton. An interpretation of the results in terms of the gluon content of the proton is presented, providing new experimental constraints on QCD-inspired models of the proton structure and the role of gluonic degrees of freedom in hadronic mass generation. 

Extracting accurate results from neutrino oscillation and cross section experiments requires accurate simulation of the neutrino-nucleus interaction. The rescattering of outgoing hadrons (final state interactions) by the rest of the nucleus is an important component of these interactions. We present a new measurement of proton transparency (defined as the fraction of outgoing protons that emerge without significant rescattering) using electron-nucleus scattering data recorded by the CLAS detector at Jefferson Laboratory on helium, carbon, and iron targets. This analysis uses a new data-driven method to extract the transparency. It defines transparency as the ratio of electron-scattering events with a detected proton to quasi-elastic electron-scattering events where a proton should have been knocked out. Our results are consistent with previous measurements that determined the transparency from the ratio of measured events to theoretically predicted events. We find that the GENIE event generator, which is widely used by oscillation experiments to simulate neutrino-nucleus interactions, needs to better describe both the nuclear ground state and proton rescattering in order to reproduce our measured transparency ratios, especially at lower proton momenta. 

Measurements of beam single-spin asymmetries in semi-inclusive deep-inelastic electron scattering (SIDIS) with positively charged kaons off protons have been performed with 10.6 and 10.2 GeV incident electron beams using the CLAS12 spectrometer at Jefferson Lab. We report an analysis of the electroproduction of positively charged kaons over a large kinematic range of fractional energy, Bjorken $x$, transverse momentum, and photon virtualities $Q^2$ranging from 1 ${\mathrm{GeV}}^2$up to 6 ${\mathrm{GeV}}^2$. This is the first published multidimensionally binned CLAS12 measurement of a kaon SIDIS single-spin asymmetry in the valence quark regime. The data provide constraints on the structure function ratio $F_{LU}^{sin\varphi }/F_{UU}$, where $F_{LU}^{sin\varphi }$is a quantity with a leading twist of twist-3 that can reveal novel aspects of the quark-gluon correlations within the nucleon. The impact of the data on understanding the underlying reaction mechanisms and their kinematic variation is explored using theoretical models for the different contributing twist-3 parton-distribution functions (PDFs) and fragmentation functions (FFs). 

We present the first threefold differential measurement for neutral-pion multiplicity ratios produced in semi-inclusive deep-inelastic electron scattering on carbon, iron, and lead nuclei normalized to deuterium from CLAS at Jefferson Lab. We found that the neutral-pion multiplicity ratio is maximally suppressed for the leading hadrons (energy fraction $z\to$1), suppression varying from 25% in carbon up to 75% in lead. An enhancement of the multiplicity ratio at low $z$and high $p_T^2$is observed, suggesting an interconnection between these two variables. This behavior is qualitatively similar to the previous twofold differential measurement of charged pions by the HERMES Collaboration and, recently, by CLAS Collaboration. The largest enhancement was observed at high $p_T^2$for heavier nuclei, namely, iron and lead, while the smallest enhancement was observed for the lightest nucleus, carbon. This behavior suggests a competition between partonic multiple scattering, which causes enhancement, and hadronic inelastic scattering, which causes suppression.