Proton and neutron structure functions

New result on charged lepton scattering from hydrogen and deuterium targets by the BCDMS, NMC and SLAC collaborations have greatly increased our knowledge of the structure functions of protons and neutrons. The disagreement between the high energy muon scattering cross sections obtained by the EMC and BCDMS collaborations have been almost completely resolved by comparison with a global analysis of old and new SLAC data and a reanalysis of EMC data. We now have a consistent set of structure functions which covers an approximate range 1 ≤ Q2 ≤ 200 (GeV/c)2 and 0.07 ≤ x ≤ 0.7. The ratio of neutron to proton structure functions decreases with increasing Q2 for values of x ≥ 0.1. The difference between proton and neutron structure functions approaches zero as x decreases, consistent with the expected √x behavior. (orig.)