Old and New Facets of y-Scaling: the Universal Features of Nuclear Structure Functions and Nucleon Momentum Distributions

Some systematic general features of y-scaling structure functions, which are essentially independent of detailed dynamics, are pointed out. Their physical interpretation in terms of general characteristics, such as a mean field description and nucleon-nucleon correlations, is given and their relationship to the momentum distributions illustrated. A new scaling variable is proposed which allows a direct expression of the scaling function in term of an integral over the momemtum distributions thereby avoiding explicit consideration of binding corrections.