Nuclear structure functions and off-shell corrections

The nth moments of the nuclear structure function F-2(A)(x, Q(2)), 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 F-2(N)(x, Q(2)), and can be as large as similar to 10% at Q(2) similar to 2 (GeV/c)(2). (C) 2001 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.