On the Interplay of Nuclear and Higher-Twist Corrections in Nuclear Structure Functions

Abstract

We discuss results from our global QCD analyses including nuclear data off deuterium from various measurements, as well as off $\text{htri}$ and $\text{hetri}$ targets from the \mara{} experiment. We simultaneously determine the parton distribution functions of the proton, the higher-twist terms, and the nucleon off-shell correction functions responsible for the modifications of the partonic structure in bound protons and neutrons. In particular, we study the neutron-proton asymmetry of the off-shell correction and its interplay with the treatment of the higher-twist terms. We observe that the data on the $\text{hetri}/\text{htri},\text{hetri}/\text{hdeu}$, and $\text{htri}/\text{hdeu}$ cross section ratio are in good agreement with the predictions based on a single isoscalar off-shell function. We provide the corresponding predictions on the ratio $F_2^n/F_2^p$, on the $d$ and $u$ quark distributions in the proton and in the $\text{htri}$ and $\text{hetri}$ nuclei, as well as for future measurements of the EMC effect with parity-violating Deep Inelastic Scattering (DIS).

Comments: 8 pages, 4 figures, proceedings of DIS2024