DOI 10.1007/s100529900005
The scale dependent nuclear effects in parton distributions
for practical applications
K.J. Eskola1 - V.J. Kolhinen1 - C.A. Salgado2
1 Department of Physics, University of
Jyväskylä, P.O.Box 35, FIN-40351 Jyväskylä, Finland
2 Departamento de Física de Partículas,
Universidade de Santiago de Compostela,
E-15706 Santiago de Compostela, Spain
Received: 10 August 1998 / Published online: 27 April 1999
Abstract
The scale dependence of the ratios of parton distributions in a proton
of a nucleus A and in the free proton,
RiA(x,Q2)=fi/A(x,Q2)/fi(x,Q2), is studied within the
framework of the lowest order leading-twist DGLAP evolution. By
evolving the initial nuclear distributions obtained with the GRV-LO
and CTEQ4L sets at a scale Q02, we show that the ratios
RiA(x,Q2) are only moderately sensitive to the choice of a
specific modern set of free parton distributions. We propose that to a
good first approximation, this parton distribution set-dependence of
the nuclear ratios RiA(x,Q2) can be neglected in practical
applications. With this result, we offer a numerical parametrization
of RiA(x,Q2) for all parton flavours i in any A>2, and
at any and any
for computing cross sections of hard processes in nuclear collisions.
Copyright Springer-Verlag