Coulomb Distortion in the Inelastic Regime

TL;DR

This paper investigates Coulomb distortion effects in deep inelastic scattering at moderate energies, highlighting their potential impact on the A-dependence of the EMC effect and the ratio R(x,Q^2).

Contribution

It introduces an analysis of Coulomb distortion effects in the inelastic regime at energies relevant to SLAC and JLab, which were previously neglected.

Findings

Coulomb distortion can influence the A-dependence of the EMC effect.

Coulomb effects may alter the ratio R(x,Q^2) at moderate energies.

Neglecting Coulomb distortion at these energies could lead to inaccuracies in data interpretation.

Abstract

The Coulomb distortion effects have been for a long time neglected in deep inelastic scattering for the good reason that the incident energies were very high. But for energies in the range of earlier data from SLAC or at JLab, the Coulomb distortion could have the potential consequence of affecting the A-dependence of the EMC effect and of the longitudinal to transverse virtual photon absorption cross section ratio $R(x,Q^2)$.