Electron-deuteron deep-inelastic scattering with spectator nucleon tagging and final-state interactions at intermediate x

Abstract

We consider electron-deuteron deep-inelastic scattering (DIS) with detection of a proton in the nuclear fragmentation region ("spectator tagging") as a method for extracting the free neutron structure functions and studying their nuclear modifications. Such measurements could be performed at a future Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) with suitable forward detectors. The measured proton recoil momentum (~< 100 MeV in the deuteron rest frame) specifies the deuteron configuration during the high-energy process and permits a controlled theoretical treatment of nuclear effects. Nuclear and nucleonic structure are separated using methods of light-front quantum mechanics. The impulse approximation (IA) to the tagged DIS cross section contains the free neutron pole, which can be reached by on-shell extrapolation in the recoil momentum. Final-state interactions (FSI) distort the recoil momentum distribution away from the pole. In the intermediate-x region 0.1 < x < 0.5 FSI arise predominantly from interactions of the spectator proton with slow hadrons produced in the DIS process on the neutron (rest frame momenta ~< 1 GeV, target fragmentation region). We construct a schematic model describing this effect, using final-state hadron distributions measured in nucleon DIS experiments and low-energy hadron scattering amplitudes. We investigate the magnitude of FSI, their dependence on the recoil momentum (angular dependence, forward/backward regions), their analytic properties, and their effect on the on-shell extrapolation. We comment on the prospects for neutron structure extraction in tagged DIS with EIC. We discuss possible extensions of the FSI model to other kinematic regions (large/small x). In tagged DIS at x << 0.1 FSI resulting from diffractive scattering on the nucleons become important and require separate treatment.

52 pages, 17 figures

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Cited by in corpus (16)

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• Exposing Novel Quark and Gluon Effects in Nuclei
• Polarized electron-deuteron deep-inelastic scattering with spectator nucleon tagging
• Deep-inelastic electron-deuteron scattering with spectator nucleon tagging at the electron-ion collider. Extracting free nucleon structure
• BeAGLE: Benchmark $e$A Generator for LEptoproduction in high energy lepton-nucleus collisions
• Nuclear final-state interactions in deep inelastic scattering off the lightest nuclei
• Neutron spin structure from polarized deuteron DIS with proton tagging
• Energy momentum tensor on and off the light cone: exposition with scalar Yukawa theory
• Semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering off a tensor-polarized spin-1 target
• Subthreshold production of $J/\psi$ mesons from the deuteron with SoLID
• Studying the Impact of Virtuality-Dependent Nucleon Structure Modification on Spectator-Tagged Deep Inelastic Scattering
• Probing the gluonic structure of the deuteron with $J/\psi$ photoproduction in d+Au ultra-peripheral collisions
• Longitudinal spin asymmetries in polarized deuteron DIS with spectator tagging