Theoretical aspects of the CEBAF 89-009 experiment on inclusive scattering of 4.05 GeV electrons from nuclei

Abstract

We compare recent CEBAF data on inclusive electron scattering on nuclei with predictions, based on a relation between structure functions (SF) of a nucleus, a nucleon and a nucleus of point-nucleons. The latter contains nuclear dynamics, e.g. binary collision contributions in addition to the asymptotic limit. The agreement with the data is good, except in low-intensity regions. Computed ternary collsion contributions appear too small for an explanation. We perform scaling analyses in Gurvitz's scaling variable and found that for \(y_G\gtrless 0\), ratios of scaling functions for pairs of nuclei differ by less than 15-20% from 1. Scaling functions for \(<y_G>0\) are, for increasing \(Q^2\), shown to approach a plateau from above. We observe only weak \(Q^2\)-dependence in FSI, which in the relevant kinematic region is ascribed to the diffractive nature of the NN amplitudes appearing in FSI. This renders it difficult to separate asymptotic from FSI parts and seriously hampers the extraction of \(n(p)\) from scaling analyses in a model-independnent fashion.