Studies of Hadronization in the Nuclear Environment - From RHIC to the EIC

How quarks and gluons, the fundamental constituents of nuclear matter, shower and fragment into the particles we measure in nuclear physics detectors is a fundamental way to study the theory of the strong nuclear interaction, also known as Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). This is especially important to understand in the collisions of light particles with nuclei, where the presences of spectator matter, the parts of the nucleus that are not directly involved in the collision, may alter how the quarks and gluons shower. In turn, this provides a powerful tool to further understand the QCD interaction in detail. Recent advances in the theory of jet substructure now offer the framework to not just count the jets of particles that emerge from these collisions, but to understand the correlations between the particles in these jets. Studies of the properties of jets at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider can further inform measurements to be made in the future with the Electron-Ion Collider.