Imaging the nucleus with high-energy photons

In the 1930s, nuclear physicists developed the first realistic atomic models, showing that nuclei were made up of protons and neutrons. In the 1960s, Deep Inelastic Scattering experiments showed that protons and neutrons had internal structure: quarks and gluons (collectively, partons), and later experiments showed that the parton momentum distributions are different in heavy nuclei, compared to those in free nucleons. This difference is not surprising; partons are sensitive to their environment, and two gluons from different nucleons may fuse together, for example. Understanding how quarks and gluons behave in the nuclear environment is a significant focus of modern nuclear physics. Recent measurements have provided us with an improved understanding of how quark and gluon densities are altered in heavy nuclei. We have also begun to make multi-dimensional pictures of the nucleus, exploring how these alterations are distributed within heavy nuclei. We naturally expect these modifications to be largest in the core of a nucleus, and smaller near its periphery; this can change the effective shape of the nucleus. We have also started to explore the transverse momentum distribution of the partons in the nuclei, and, using incoherent photoproduction as a probe, study event-by-event fluctuations in nucleon and nuclei parton densities. This article will explore recent progress in measurements of nuclear structure at high energy, with some emphasis on these multi-dimensional pictures. We will also discuss how a future electron-ion collider (EIC) with high luminosity and center-of-mass energy will make exquisitely detailed images of partons in a nucleus.