Nuclear shadowing and extraction of F_2p-F_2n at small x from deuteron collider data

Abstract

We demonstrate that leading twist nuclear shadowing leads to large corrections for the extraction of the neutron structure function F_2n from the future deuteron collider data both in the inclusive and in the tagged structure function modes. We suggest several strategies to address the extraction of F_2n and to measure at the same time the effect of nuclear shadowing via the measurement of the distortion of the proton spectator spectrum in the semi-inclusive e D \to e^{\prime}pX process.

5 pages, 4 figures, RevTex4. The final version published in Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 202001 (2003)