Lepton Scattering on Nuclei at x > 1 and the Nucleon Spectral Function

Abstract

We analyze the processes of deep inelastic and quasielastic scattering in the region of x > 1. These processes are found to be very sensitive to the information contained in the nucleon spectral function in nuclei, particularly to the correlations between energy and momentum. Calculations are done using two spectral functions for nuclear matter and one for finite nuclei, ^{16}O. Several approximations are also analyzed and are shown to be inaccurate in this region. These results stress the fact that the region of x > 1 contains important information on nuclear dynamical correlations.