Study of the multi-dimensional hadron structure and formation

We do not fully understand 95% of our mass and that of the visible universe.
Visible matter is made of atoms. The atom's nucleus is made of protons and neutrons, collectively
referred to as nucleons, and these nucleons consist of a highly energetic soup of very fast moving
and constantly interacting quarks and gluons. Gluons have no mass and quarks a negligibly small
one, yet together, through their interaction, they generate most of the mass we can see.
Understanding how that occurs is the subject of my proposal.
I will use data from the CMS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN, obtained when
protons and nuclei are brought into collision at unprecedented energies. I will look at glancing
collisions, where the interacting beam particles do no break up and convert some of their energy into
the creation of a new particle, and at head-on collisions where the interacting particles break up and
create many new particles. I will also work on expanding measurements we can perform in the
future at the new electron-ion collider at BNL, US, where we will use a very precise, point-like probe
to study the nucleon.
All these studies will allow us to understand the interaction between the quarks and gluons better.
In particular, they will teach us how quarks and gluons evolve into the particles we can see in our
detectors, where the quarks and gluons are located inside the nucleon, how they move, how they
orbit each other and how they generate pressure inside the nucleon.