Polarized deep-inelastic lepton scattering from the polarized two- and three-nucleon bound states

Abstract

A relativistic description of polarized deep-inelastic lepton scattering from polarized nuclei is presented. It is based on front form dynamics. Convolution formulas for the nuclear spin structure functions gA1 and gA2 are derived. They require the front form spin distributions of nuclei and the nucleonic spin structure functions. The description is applied to the deuteron and the trinucleon bound states. The numerical calculations show that relativistic effects arising from the consistent quantum mechanical treatment of spin are small. Simple approximations to the convolution formulas for gA1 and gA2 are justified. The approximative convolution formulas allow the subtraction of nuclear effects from measured spin structure functions and therefore the experimental determination of the neutron spin structure functions. Polarized 3He turns out to be a rather reliable effective neutron spin target for deep-inelastic scattering of polarized leptons. The differences between descriptions based on front form and on instant form dynamics are also discussed.