Extracting a free neutron structure function from proton and deuteron deep inelastic scattering data

TL;DR

This paper proposes a new phenomenological method to extract the free neutron structure function from deuteron and proton deep inelastic scattering data by leveraging the correlation between the EMC effect and two-nucleon short-range correlations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach that reduces model dependence in neutron structure function extraction by utilizing the EMC effect and 2N-SRC correlation.

Findings

Established a correlation between EMC effect magnitude and 2N-SRC pairs.

Proposed a phenomenological extraction procedure for neutron structure function.

Applicable in the xB range of 0.3 to 0.7.

Abstract

Due to the lack of a free neutron target the structure function of the neutron cannot be measured directly and is therefore extracted from deuteron and proton DIS data. Because the deuteron is a bound nuclear system, in order to extract the neutron structure function, one needs to apply model dependent theoretical corrections which dominate the uncertainty at the large xB region. We present here a correlation between the magnitude of the EMC effect and the amount of two nucleon Short Range Correlation (2N-SRC) pairs in nuclei. Using this correlation we propose a phenomenological procedure to extract the free neutron structure function in the xB range of 0.3 to 0.7.