Under the auspices of the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (MŠMT), the Faculty of Nuclear Sciences and Physical Engineering (FJFI), Czech Technical University in Prague (CTU), in collaboration with the Nuclear Physics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences, hosted the fifth meeting of the financial committee of the Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) project. The meeting took place on June 5–6, 2025, at Villa Lanna. During this session, representatives of funding agencies and member countries involved in this international project discussed details concerning the construction and current state of preparations for the EIC accelerator and its flagship international experiment, ePIC.
In one of the opening talks of the RRB meeting, EIC Project Director and Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) Deputy Director Dr. Jim Yeck presented the key milestones and current status of the EIC accelerator, whose construction is set to begin next year. In his presentation, Dr. Yeck also discussed the latest Czech contribution related to the development and construction of a laser source for the EIC.
Spokespersons for the ePIC experiment, Prof. John Lajoie (Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USA) and Prof. Silvia Dalla Torre (INFN, Italy), followed with updates on the preparation of the ePIC experiment and its individual detectors. They also highlighted contributions from the Czech Republic, including work on the luminosity detector, development of silicon detectors, and notably the design of the calorimeter, for which crystal delivery is planned in cooperation with the company CRYTUR from Turnov.
The EIC accelerator at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL), USA, will be a unique experimental facility and the first collider in the world capable of colliding high-intensity beams of polarized electrons with polarized protons. This will allow researchers to probe deep inside the proton—composed of quarks and gluons—and, for the first time, create a detailed three-dimensional map of its structure.
The interactions of quarks and gluons, described by quantum chromodynamics (QCD), are a fundamental part of the Standard Model of particle physics. However, due to their complexity, scientists still do not fully understand how quarks and gluons interact within protons.
The EIC will also allow the study of electron-nucleus interactions—from deuterium to uranium—enhancing our understanding of so-called cold nuclear matter and saturation effects.
The EIC is currently the largest new accelerator of international importance under development. It is expected to begin phased commissioning in 2032, with full experimental data collection anticipated by 2035.
More than 1,500 scientists from 300 laboratories and universities across 40 countries are currently involved in the EIC project. From the Czech Republic, researchers and students from CTU in Prague, Charles University, and the Nuclear Physics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences are participating. This involvement is supported under the Large Research Infrastructure project of the Czech Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports: BNL-CZ LM2023034. It builds upon nearly 25 years of highly successful Czech participation in the RHIC accelerator program at BNL and its international STAR experiment, which investigates the properties of quark-gluon plasma—a form of hot and dense nuclear matter that existed shortly after the Big Bang—and the spin structure of the proton.