Light Cone Dynamics and EMC Effects in the Extraction of F_{2n} at Large Bjorken x

TL;DR

This paper examines the theoretical challenges in extracting the neutron's deep inelastic structure function at large Bjorken x from deuteron scattering data, emphasizing medium modifications of bound nucleons and their impact on uncertainties.

Contribution

It provides a theoretical justification for focusing on the pn component of the deuteron and discusses the dominant role of medium modifications over non-nucleonic components in nuclear DIS at large x.

Findings

Medium modifications are the main source of uncertainty in neutron structure extraction.

Uncertainties are largely model-independent and increase with x.

Color screening model estimates uncertainties in the neutron structure function at large x.

Abstract

We discuss theoretical issues related to the extraction of deep inelastic~(DIS) structure function of neutron from inclusive DIS scattering off the deuteron at large Bjorken x. Theoretical justification is given to the consideration of only $pn$ component of the deuteron wave function and consistency with both the baryonic number and light-cone momentum conservation sum rules. Next we discuss the EMC type effects and argue that in all cases relevant to the nuclear DIS reactions at large x the main issue is the medium modification of the properties of bound nucleon rather than the non-nucleonic components like pions. We give brief description of the color screening model of EMC and within this model we estimate uncertainties in the extraction of the neutron DIS structure function at large x. We emphasize also that these uncertainties are rather "model independent" since any theoretical framework accounting for the medium modification is proportional to the magnitude of the virtuality of bound nucleon which increases with an increase of x.