Published November 19, 2010 | Version v1
Journal article

Scaling of the F2 Structure Function in Nuclei and Quark Distributions at x>1

  • 1. University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee (United States)
  • 2. University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia (United States)
  • 3. Physics Division, Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, Illinois (United States)
  • 4. Thomas Jefferson National Laboratory, Newport News, Virginia (United States)

Description

We present new data on electron scattering from a range of nuclei taken in Hall C at Jefferson Lab. For heavy nuclei, we observe a rapid falloff in the cross section for x>1, which is sensitive to short-range contributions to the nuclear wave function, and in deep inelastic scattering corresponds to probing extremely high momentum quarks. This result agrees with higher energy muon scattering measurements, but is in sharp contrast to neutrino scattering measurements which suggested a dramatic enhancement in the distribution of the ''superfast'' quarks probed at x>1. The falloff at x>1 is noticeably stronger in 2H and 3He, but nearly identical for all heavier nuclei.

Additional details

Publishing Information

Journal Title
Physical Review Letters
Journal Volume
105
Journal Issue
21
Journal Page Range
p. 212502-212502.5
ISSN
0031-9007
CODEN
PRLTAO

Optional Information

Notes
(c) 2010 American Institute of Physics