Interpreting the nuclear scale change in deep inelastic scattering

This paper reports on the nuclear effects observed in deep inelastic scattering by the European Muon collaboration viewed in terms of an increased correlation length in nuclei. Both Fermi motion and the presence of a scalar potential affect this correlation length so no nuclear change in the intrinsic momentum distributions of quarks in a bound nucleon may be directly inferred from the data. The data at large Bjorken x can be understood in mean field approximation as arising from relativistic Fermi motion and a density dependent x-rescaling driven by a scalar potential of about 70 MeV in Fe. Because vector potentials do not affect the nucleonic contribution to the nuclear structure function, the single particle energy (on which the troubled binding model is based) is irrelevant