Target mass corrections in lepton--nucleus DIS: theory and applications to nuclear PDFs

Abstract

Motivated by the wide range of kinematics covered by current and planned deep-inelastic scattering (DIS) facilities, we revisit the formalism, practical implementation, and numerical impact of target mass corrections (TMCs) for DIS on unpolarized nuclear targets. An important aspect is that we only use nuclear and later partonic degrees of freedom, carefully avoiding a picture of the nucleus in terms of nucleons. After establishing that formulae used for individual nucleon targets $(p,n)$, derived in the Operator Product Expansion (OPE) formalism, are indeed applicable to nuclear targets, we rewrite expressions for nuclear TMCs in terms of \mbox{re-scaled} (or averaged) kinematic variables. As a consequence, we find a representation for nuclear TMCs that is approximately independent of the nuclear target. We go on to construct a single-parameter fit for all nuclear targets that is in good numerical agreement with full computations of TMCs. We discuss in detail qualitative and quantitative differences between nuclear TMCs built in the OPE and the parton model formalisms, as well as give numerical predictions for current and future facilities.

journal version: 96 pages (including two appendices and references), many plots and figures, extended/improved discussions

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Cited by in corpus (5)

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• Hard processes in multi-TeV ion collisions
• Experimental Study of Bremsstrahlung Gamma Ray Emission and Short-Range Correlations in ${}^{124}$Sn+${}^{124}$Sn Collisions at 25 MeV/u
• QCD analysis of valence structure functions using deep inelastic lepton-nucleon scattering