MEASUREMENT OF THE A-DEPENDENCE OF DEEP-INELASTIC ELECTRON-SCATTERING

Cross sections for deep-inelastic electron scattering from liquid deuterium, gaseous He-4, and solid Be, C, Al, Ca, Fe, Ag, and Au targets were measured at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center using electrons with energies ranging from 8 to 24.5 GeV. These data cover a range in the Bjorken variable x from 0.089 to 0.8, and in momentum transfer Q2 from 2 to 15 (GeV/c)2. The ratios of cross sections per nucleon sigma(A)/sigma(d))is for isoscalar nuclei have been extracted from the data. These ratios are greater than unity in the range 0.1 < x < 0.3, while for 0.3 < x < 0.8 they are less than unity and decrease logarithmically with atomic weight A, or linearly with average nuclear density. No Q2 dependence in the ratios was observed over the kinematic range of the data. These results are compared to various theoretical predictions.