Hadron mass corrections in semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering

Understand

We derive mass corrections for semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering of leptons from nucleons using a collinear factorization framework which incorporates the initial state mass of the target nucleon and the final state mass of the produced hadron.

• The formalism is constructed specifically to ensure that physical kinematic thresholds for the semi-inclusive process are explicitly respected.
• A systematic study of the kinematic dependencies of the mass corrections to semi-inclusive cross sections reveals that these are even larger than for inclusive structure functions, especially at very small and very large hadron momentum fractions.
• The hadron mass corrections compete with the experimental uncertainties at kinematics typical of current facilities, and will be important to efforts at extracting parton distributions or fragmentation functions from semi-inclusive processes at intermediate energies.