Measurement of the structure function of the nearly free neutron using spectator tagging in inelastic $^2$H(e, e'p)X scattering with CLAS

Understand

Much less is known about neutron structure than that of the proton due to the absence of free neutron targets.

• Neutron information is usually extracted from data on nuclear targets such as deuterium, requiring corrections for nuclear binding and nucleon off-shell effects.
• These corrections are model dependent and have significant uncertainties, especially for large values of the Bjorken scaling variable x.
• The Barely Off-shell Nucleon Structure (BONuS) experiment at Jefferson Lab measured the inelastic electron deuteron scattering cross section, tagging spectator protons in coincidence with the scattered electrons.