Existence of nuclear modifications on longitudinal-transverse structure-function ratio

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that nuclear modifications to the longitudinal-transverse structure-function ratio exist due to nucleon transverse motion, impacting the extraction of nucleon structure functions and requiring further experimental investigation.

Contribution

It provides the first explicit numerical analysis of nuclear modifications to the structure-function ratio $R_N$ caused by nucleon transverse motion in nuclei.

Findings

Nuclear modifications to $R_N$ are significant at medium and large $x$.

Transverse motion causes mixing of longitudinal and transverse structure functions.

Future experiments at electron-ion colliders can explore these nuclear effects.

Abstract

It has been assumed that nuclear modification does not exist in the longitudinal-transverse structure-function ratio $R_N=F_L^N/(2xF_1^N)$ in lepton deep inelastic scattering. This assumption is widely used in obtaining structure functions of the "nucleon" from nuclear data such as the deuteron ones. However, nuclear modifications do exist theoretically at least in medium- and large-$x$ regions because nucleons in a nucleus move in any direction, which is not necessarily the longitudinal direction of the virtual-photon or weak-boson momentum in lepton scattering. Because of this transverse motion, the nucleon's transverse and longitudinal structure functions should mix with each other in nuclei with the mixture probability proportional to the nucleon's transverse momentum squared $\vec p_T^{\,\, 2}/Q^2$. In this work, numerical results are explicitly shown regarding such nuclear modifications in the deuteron. These nuclear modifications are important for determining precise structure functions of the nucleon. Furthermore, modifications of $R_N$ should be investigated also at small $x$ by the future electron-ion collider to find interesting gluon dynamics in nuclei. Hopefully, this nuclear effect of $R_N$ could be found by future experimental measurements at lepton accelerator facilities.