Nuclear structure functions and off-shell corrections

The nth moments of the nuclear structure function F2A(x,Q2) are analyzed using the off-shell kinematics appropriate to describe deep inelastic electron–nucleus scattering within the impulse approximation. It is shown that off-shell effects are sensitive to the form of both the nuclear spectral function and the nucleon structure function F2N(x,Q2), and can be as large as ∼10% at Q2∼2 (GeV/c)2.