SPIN-DEPENDENT NUCLEAR STRUCTURE FUNCTIONS: GENERAL APPROACH WITH APPLICATION TO THE DEUTERON

We study deep-inelastic scattering from polarized nuclei within a covariant framework. A clear connection is established between relativistic and non-relativistic limits, which enables a rigorous derivation of convolution formulae for the spin-dependent nuclear structure functions g_1^A and g_2^A in terms of off-mass-shell extrapolations of polarized nucleon structure functions, g_1^N and g_2^N. Approximate expressions for g_{1,2}^A are obtained by expanding the off-shell g_{1,2}^N about their on-shell limits. As an application of the formalism we consider nuclear effects in the deuteron, knowledge of which is necessary to obtain accurate information on the spin-dependent structure functions of the neutron.