Proton and neutron structure functions in a Fermi-gas approximation

Abstract

The proton and neutron deep-inelastic scattering structure functions are found to be fit reasonably well by a finite-temperature Fermi-gas (effective) description of the confined quarks. Support problems at negative $x$ are avoided completely and formal sum rules are satisfied. The characteristic difference between the $u$ and $d$ valence distributions, which is difficult to achieve in many models of nucleon structure, arises naturally as a consequence of the different densities of $u$ and $d$ quarks in the nucleon.