Nuclear effects on longitudinal-transverse structure function ratio in the deuteron

Abstract

Nuclear modifications of the nucleon's structure function $F_2^N$ have been investigated mainly since the discovery of the EMC nuclear effect in 1983, and there were many experimental measurements from the deuteron to a heavy nucleus. Now, the details of the modifications of $F_2^N$ are known from small $x$ to large $x$. On the other hand, it is taken as granted that a nuclear modification does not exist for the longitudinal-transverse structure function ratio $R_N=F_L^N/(2xF_1^N)$. However, such a nuclear modification does exist theoretically. A nucleon in a nucleus moves in any space direction, which is not necessary the longitudinal direction along the virtual-photon momentum in charged-lepton scattering. Because of this transverse Fermi motion, the longitudinal and transverse structure functions mix with the mixture probability proportional to the nucleon's transverse-momentum squared $\vec p_T^{\,\, 2}/Q^2$. In this paper, the nuclear modifications are shown numerically for the deuteron by using a standard convolution description. The magnitude of the modifications is of the order of a few percent in the deuteron; however, they should be large in large nuclei. In handling high-energy nuclear data, such nuclear modifications need to be taken into account for a precise determination of physical quantities. Now, the longitudinal-transverse structure-function ratio and tensor-polarized experiments are under preparation for the deuteron at JLab. We hope that such effects will be confirmed experimentally for not only for the deuteron but also for larger nuclei.

Figures (2)

• Figure 1: Nuclear modifications of $F_1^N$, $F_2^N$, and $F_L^N$ for the deuteron at $Q^2=5$ GeV$^2$.
• Figure 2: Nuclear modifications of $R_N$ for the deuteron at $Q^2=1$, 10, and 100 GeV$^2$.