Corrections to nucleon spin structure asymmetries measured on nuclear polarized targets - art. no. 035201

The nucleon spin structure functions have been extracted from measurements of asymmetries in deep inelastic scattering of polarized leptons on polariz ed nuclei. The polarized nuclei present in practical targets: H, H-2, He-3, N-14, (NI)-N-15 Li-6, and Li-7, are, with the exception of hydrogen, syste ms of bound nucleons, some of which can attain significant degrees of align ment. All the aligned nucleons contribute to the asymmetries. The contribut ions of each nuclear species to the asymmetry have to be carefully determin ed, before a reliable value for the net nucleon asymmetry is obtained. For this purpose, the spin component of the nuclear angular momentum for every nuclear state and the probability of each state have to be known with suffi cient accuracy. In this paper I discuss the basic corrections used to estim ate the contributions of the different nuclei, with emphasis on the A=6 and 7 Li isotopes present in the (LiH)-H-2 polarized target used during SLAG E xperiment 155 to study the deuteron spin structure. [S0556-2813(99)04308-3] .