y-scaling in Quasielastic Electron Scattering from Nuclei

A relativistic single particle model is used to calculate the inclusive $(e,e')$ reaction from $A=$12, 40, 56, 197, and 208 nuclei in the quasielastic region. We have shown that this model provides a very good description of the available experimental cross sections when they are dominated by the quasielastic process. In this paper we use this model to investigate the dependence of $y$-scaling on electron kinematics, particularly the electron scattering angle, for a range of squared four momentum transfer $0.20-0.80$ (GeV/c)$^2$. In this kinematic domain, Coulomb distortion of the electron does not significantly affect scaling, but final state interactions of the knocked out nucleon do affect scaling particularly when the nucleons have lower energies. In general, we find that scaling works for this reaction, but at lower values of the four momentum transfer, the scaling function does have some dependence on the electron scattering angle. We also consider a modification of y-scaling to include small binding energy effects as a function of Z and A and show that there is some improvement in scaling.