Nuclear medium effects in structure functions of nucleon at moderate $Q^2$

TL;DR

This paper investigates how nuclear medium effects influence nucleon structure functions at moderate Q^2, using a relativistic spectral function approach and comparing results with recent experimental data.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive calculation of nuclear medium effects on structure functions incorporating Fermi motion, binding, correlations, mesonic contributions, and shadowing, aligned with recent experiments.

Findings

Nuclear medium effects significantly modify structure functions.

Calculated results agree well with recent JLab data.

Mesonic and shadowing contributions are essential for accurate modeling.

Abstract

Recent experiments performed on inclusive electron scattering from nuclear targets have measured the nucleon electromagnetic structure functions $F_1(x,Q^2)$, $F_2(x,Q^2)$ and $F_L(x,Q^2)$ in $^{12}C$, $^{27}Al$, $^{56}Fe$ and $^{64}Cu$ nuclei. The measurements have been done in the energy region of $1 GeV^2 < W^2 < 4 GeV^2$ and $Q^2$ region of $0.5 GeV^2 < Q^2 < 4.5 GeV^2$. We have calculated nuclear medium effects in these structure functions arising due to the Fermi motion, binding energy, nucleon correlations, mesonic contributions from pion and rho mesons and shadowing effects. The calculations are performed in a local density approximation using relativistic nucleon spectral function which include nucleon correlations. The numerical results are compared with the recent experimental data from JLab and also with some earlier experiments.