2023/12/21 by T. J. Hague, Hague, T. J., J. Arrington +5
Chemistry · Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #Inorganic Fluorides and Related Compounds #Nuclear Experiment (nucl-ex) #Nuclear Physics and Applications #Nuclear Theory (nucl-th) #Nuclear physics research studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2312.13499
openalex publication_date 2023/12/21 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
The neutron structure function, F2n, has historically been extracted from measurements of the deuteron structure function, but our understanding of the nuclear effects on the bound proton and neutron limits the extraction of F2n. The MARATHON collaboration recently extracted F2n from the comparison of 3H and 3He targets, where the nuclear effects are larger but nearly identical, yielding a precise extraction of F2n/F2p. This precise extraction can then be compared to deuteron extractions, providing important constraints on the nuclear effects in the deuteron. To ensure that this comparison is not biased by the specific model of nuclear effects used by MARATHON, we examine a range of models of the nuclear effects to obtain a more conservative, but more model-independent, extraction of F2n/F2p for comparison with deuteron extractions. Even with the more conservative approach, the comparison suggests the need for significant off-shell corrections or other nuclear effects, beyond those include in most calculations, even for the weakly-bound deuteron.