How well do we know the neutron structure function?

TL;DR

This paper provides a comprehensive analysis of the uncertainties in the neutron structure function F2n, improving the precision of its extraction from scattering data by carefully accounting for various nuclear and experimental uncertainties.

Contribution

It introduces a refined analysis method that reduces uncertainties in the neutron structure function extraction by incorporating microscopic nuclear models and Q^2 dependence.

Findings

Smaller uncertainty in F2n/F2p ratio compared to previous studies

Enhanced baseline for future model-independent neutron structure extractions

Improved understanding of nuclear medium effects in the deuteron

Abstract

We present a detailed analysis of the uncertainty in the neutron F2n structure function extracted from inclusive deuteron and proton deep-inelastic scattering data. The analysis includes experimental uncertainties as well as uncertainties associated with the deuteron wave function, nuclear smearing, and nucleon off-shell corrections. Consistently accounting for the Q^2 dependence of the data and calculations, and restricting the nuclear corrections to microscopic models of the deuteron, we find significantly smaller uncertainty in the extracted F2n/F2p ratio than in previous analyses. In addition to yielding an improved extraction of the neutron structure function, this analysis also provides an important baseline that will allow future, model-independent extractions of neutron structure to be used to examine nuclear medium effects in the the deuteron.