Electron scattering from a deeply bound nucleon on the light-front

TL;DR

This paper develops a light-front approximation method to calculate electron scattering cross sections from bound nucleons, enabling systematic analysis of off-shell effects crucial for probing nuclear structure at high energies.

Contribution

It introduces a new dynamical parameter to control off-shell effects in electron-bound nucleon scattering within the light-front framework.

Findings

Derived a new cross section formula incorporating off-shell effects.

Compared the new approach with existing methods, showing improved control over off-shellness.

Demonstrated the applicability of the method across different momentum transfer regions.

Abstract

We calculate the cross section of the electron scattering from a bound nucleon within light-front approximation. The advantage of this approximation is the possibility of systematic account for the off-shell effects which become essential in high energy electro-nuclear processes aimed at probing the nuclear structure at small distances. We derive a new dynamical parameter which allows to control the extent of the "off-shellness" of electron - bound-nucleon electromagnetic current for different regions of momentum transfer and initial light-cone momenta of the bound nucleon. The derived cross section is compared with the results of other approaches in treating the off-shell effects in electron-nucleon scattering.