Inclusive and diffractive dijet photoproduction at the Electron-Ion Collider in NLO QCD (2303.05182v2)

Abstract: In the framework of collinear factorization and next-to-leading order (NLO) perturbative QCD, we make predictions for inclusive and diffractive dijet photoproduction in electron-proton and electron-nucleus scattering in the EIC kinematics. We establish kinematic ranges in the ${\bar p}T$, ${\bar \eta}$, $x_A^{\rm obs}$ and $x{\gamma}^{\rm obs}$ variables, quantify sensitivity to small-$x$ nuclear PDFs, and analyze various scenarios of factorization breaking in the case of diffractive scattering.