On the analysis of deep inelastic neutron scattering experiments for lightnuclei

We analyze different procedures for data processing in deep inelastic neutr on scattering experiments focussing our attention on experiments performed on light nuclei. We first examine experiments in which the desired informat ion is obtained from the observed peak areas in the particular case of mixt ures of light and heavy water. In the second part we examine the procedure to obtain an effective temperature from the experimental peaks. As a conseq uence of the results emerging from both cases we trace the limits of validi ty of the convolution formalism usually employed. and propose a different t reatment of the experimental data for this kind of measurements. (C) 2001 E lsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.