Summer Program

Strongly Interacting Quantum Matter at the Electron-Ion Collider

August 17–September 14, 2025

Organizers:

Dmitri Kharzeev, Stony Brook University
Zein-Eddine Meziani, Argonne National Laboratory
Farid Salazar, University of Washington
Yong Zhao, Argonne National Laboratory

Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) is one of the pillars of the Standard Model of particle physics, describing the strongly interacting quantum matter bound inside subatomic nuclei in terms of its fundamental degrees of freedom: quarks and gluons. The Electron-Ion Collider (EIC), under construction at Brookhaven National Laboratory, represents a major investment by the US Department of Energy and holds immense potential to advance our understanding of QCD and strongly interacting systems in general. To fully realize this potential, it is essential to assess and extend the EIC’s core physics program—covering the origin of mass and spin, the nature of hadronization and confinement, the tomographic imaging of hadrons and nuclei, and the emergence of gluon-saturated matter—to establish its broader connections with other research areas. This workshop will bring together experts from particle, nuclear, condensed matter, and quantum information physics to address challenges in understanding strongly interacting quantum matter. By integrating modern techniques in lattice QCD, effective field theory, phenomenology, many-body methods, and quantum information science, we aim to provide critical input to the EIC’s scientific program and examine its complementarity with the LHC, as well as foster interdisciplinary collaborations on advancing condensed matter physics, particle, and nuclear astrophysics.

Summer Workshops

The summer program, running for 16 weeks from late-May to mid-September, emphasizes exciting open problems at the cutting edge. Two or three concurrent workshops, each with a specific focus selected for timeliness and the potential for breakthroughs and of two to five weeks in length, establish the main themes of each week, with twelve or thirteen different workshops each summer, balanced across fields including particle physics, string theory, astrophysics and hard and soft condensed matter physics, as well as emerging areas including biological physics, ultra-cold atom physics, quantum information, and physical mathematics. Additional researchers participate in small working groups or as individual researchers. This framework is designed to maximize informal interactions and free discussion within each area and to promote cross-fertilization between different areas via the common language of theoretical physics. Participation in the summer program of the Aspen Center for Physics is by application and subsequent invitation only. View past workshops.