Nucleon and nuclear spin structure functions

I review the main features of the nuclear response extracted from electron scattering data. The emerging picture clearly shows that the shell model does not provide a fully quantitative description of nuclear dynamics. On the other hand, many body approaches in which correlation effetcs are explicitely taken into account lead to a satisfactory account of electron scattering observables. The possibility of exploiting the knowledge acquired from electron scattering to reduce th...

The spin structure of the nucleon resonance region is analyzed on the basis of our phenomenological model MAID. Predictions are given for the Gerasimov-Drell-Hearn sum rule as well as generalized integrals over spin structure functions. The dependence of these integrals on momentum transfer is studied and rigorous relationships between various definitions of generalized Gerasimov-Drell-Hearn integrals and spin polarizabilities are derived. These results are compared to the pr...

$^3$He spin-dependent structure functions, $g^3_1(x)$ and $g^3_2(x)$, which parametrize the hadronic tensor in polarized deep-inelastic scattering, were evaluated within the Poincar\'e covariant light-front framework. The Bakamjian-Thomas construction of the Poincar\'e generators allows us to make use of a realistic $^3$He wave function, obtained from refined nuclear phenomenological potentials. The same approach was already successfully applied to the $^3$He and $^4$He unpol...

The neutron's deep-inelastic structure functions provide essential information for the flavor separation of the nucleon parton densities, the nucleon spin decomposition, and precision studies of QCD phenomena in the flavor-singlet and nonsinglet sectors. Traditional inclusive measurements on nuclear targets are limited by dilution from scattering on protons, Fermi motion and binding effects, final-state interactions, and nuclear shadowing at x << 0.1. An Electron-Ion Collider...

We propose a new method for extracting neutron structure functions from inclusive structure functions of nuclei. Unlike earlier approaches, the new method is applicable to both spin-averaged and spin-dependent structure functions. We test the reliability of the method on unpolarized F_2 and polarized g_1 structure functions of the deuteron in both the nucleon resonance and deep inelastic regions. The new method is able to reproduce known input functions of almost arbitrary sh...

The spin-averaged structure function of the neutron, F_2^n, is extracted from recent deuteron data, taking into account the small but significant corrections due to nuclear effects in the deuteron. At small x, the F_2D/F_2p ratio measured by the New Muon and Fermilab E665 Collaborations is interpreted to suggest a small amount of shadowing in deuterium, which acts to enhance F_2^n for x < 0.1. A careful treatment of Fermi motion, binding and nucleon off-shell effects in the d...

This paper has been withdrawn by the author due to the appearence of enlarged version with one new author name more (hep-ph/0012293).

We discuss nuclear effects in the structure function F_3 measured in neutrino deep-inelastic scattering on heavy nuclear targets.

The deep inelastic scattering of leptons off nuclei is considered within the the Bethe-Salpeter formalism. It is shown that nuclear short-range structure can be expressed in terms of the nucleon structure functions and four-dimensional Fermi motion of the nucleons. The four-dimensional Fermi motion broadens the bound nucleon localization area, what lead to the observation of the nucleon structure change in nuclei -- EMC effect. The $\rm ^4He$ to deuteron structure functions r...

I review recent theoretical results on polarized deep inelastic lepton nucleon scattering. Some specific issues, like $Q^2$ evolution of structure functions, the small $x$ behaviour, and the determination of polarized parton densities, are discussed in some detail.