Inelastic scattering of high energy muons from nuclear targets

This thesis concerns the measurement of the inelastic cross section of high energy muons from nuclear targets. It was performed at Brookhaven National Laboratory using a 10.5 GeV muon beam and a system of multiwire proportional chambers constructed in Rochester. The range of 0.2 < Q2 < 2.4 (GeV/c)2 and 1 < nu < 9 GeV was explored and it was found that in most cases muons scatter incoherently from the individual nucleons in the nucleus. However, for a small fraction of the events the nucleons shadow one another resulting in a cross section sigma/sub T/ approx. sigma/sub N/A/sup rho/ where A is the atomic number of the nuclear target and 0.9 < rho < 1.0. This shadowing effect is attributed to the strongly interacting component of the exchanged virtual photon and its magnitude was found to be in excess of the predictions of current theoretical models