Extraction of neutron structure from tagged structure functions

TL;DR

This paper develops a model to extract neutron structure functions from semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering data on deuterons, demonstrating good agreement with experimental results and proposing an extrapolation method for high Bjorken x.

Contribution

It introduces a novel combination of the virtual nucleon approximation and generalized eikonal approximation to analyze neutron structure functions from experimental data.

Findings

Good agreement with Jefferson Lab data across kinematic ranges

Suppressed off-shell rescattering amplitude observed

Extracted W and Q^2 dependence of cross sections

Abstract

We present work in a model used to describe semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering off the deuteron. The model uses the virtual nucleon approximation to describe the interaction of the photon with the bound neutron and the generalized eikonal approximation is applied to calculate the final-state interaction diagram. Comparison with data taken at Jefferson Lab shows good agreement in the covered range of kinematics and points at a largely suppressed off-shell rescattering amplitude. The $W$ and $Q^2$ dependences of the total cross section and slope factor of the interaction of DIS products, $X$, off the spectator nucleon are extracted. Starting from the JLab data and our model calculations, we outline and apply an extrapolation method to obtain the neutron structure function $F_{2N}$ at high Bjorken $x$.