Shadowing effects in deep-inelastic lepton-nucleus scattering

Abstract

We investigate the shadowing phenomenon observed in deep inelastic lepton-nucleus scattering in the region of small x using a generalization of the vector meson dominance model which includes both the low mass vector meson resonances and the higher mass quark-antiquark continuum in the photon spectral function. Our description is consistent with the nucleon structure function ${\mathit{F}}_2^{\mathit{N}}$(${\mathit{Q}}^2$,x) in the low x region, including its scaling properties. We find that the nuclear multiple scattering of hadronic components of the virtual photon reproduces the experimental data for ${\mathit{F}}_2^{\mathit{A}}$/${\mathit{AF}}_2^{\mathit{N}}$ at x