E 12-10-008 Update : Detailed studies of the nuclear dependence of F 2 in light nuclei

Jefferson Lab experiment E12-10-008 was approved to perform inclusive electron scattering measurements from several light to medium heavy nuclei over a broad range of x (0.1 < x < 1) up to Q ≈ 15 GeV. The data collected by this experiment will build on existing JLab measurements of the EMC effect by extending precise extraction of the EMC ratios to a larger x and Q range, and by making additional measurements on light nuclei (A < 12) to provide better data for constraining calculations of nuclear effects in these well understood nuclei. Because results from Jefferson Lab do not support the previous A-dependent or density-dependent fits to the EMC effect, including an expanded set of light nuclei will help investigate the role of the detailed nuclear structure and test the idea that the local nuclear environment plays an important role in the modification of quark distributions. In addition, a better understanding of the EMC effect in light nuclei will provide guidance for calculation of nuclear effects in deuterium, which is necessary to extract the neutron structure function, while new measurements of the deuteron and proton structure functions at large x will provide new data for such extractions. This document briefly summarizes the motivation and requirements of the experiment E12-10008. The physics motivation for the measurements remains essentially unchanged, and there have been no major changes in any technical aspects of the experiment since it was approved by PAC35. For the full version of the proposal please see reference [1].