English

Recent progress on nuclear parton distribution functions

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2015-05-27 v2 High Energy Physics - Experiment Nuclear Experiment Nuclear Theory

Abstract

We report current status of global analyses on nuclear parton distribution functions (NPDFs). The optimum NPDFs are determined by analyzing high-energy nuclear reaction data. Due to limited experimental measurements, antiquark modifications have large uncertainties at x>0.2 and gluon modifications cannot be determined. A nuclear modification difference between u and d quark distributions could be an origin of the long-standing NuTeV sin^2 theta_w anomaly. There is also an issue of nuclear modification differences between the structure functions of charged-lepton and neutrino reactions. Next, nuclear clustering effects are discussed in structure functions F_2^A as a possible explanation for an anomalous result in the Be-9 nucleus at the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Facility (JLab). Last, tensor-polarized quark and antiquark distribution functions are extracted from HERMES data on the polarized structure function b_1 of the deuteron, and they could be used for testing theoretical models and for proposing future experiments, for example, the one at JLab. Such measurements could open a new field of spin physics in spin-one hadrons.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1102.3479,
  title  = {Recent progress on nuclear parton distribution functions},
  author = {M. Hirai and S. Kumano and K. Saito},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1102.3479},
  year   = {2015}
}

Comments

9 pages, LaTeX, 11 eps files, to be published in APS Proceedings of the 3rd International Workshop on Nucleon Structure at Large Bjorken x, Newport News, Virginia, USA, October 13-15, 2010

R2 v1 2026-06-21T17:27:39.609Z