Nuclear Effects in the Deuteron and Global PDF Fits

Abstract: We present a detailed study of nuclear corrections in the deuteron (D) from an analysis of data from charged-lepton deep-inelastic scattering (DIS) off proton and D, as well as from dimuon pair production in pp and pD collisions and $W^\pm$ and the $Z$ boson production at pp (p$\rm \bar p$) colliders. In particular, we discuss the determination of the off-shell function describing the modification of parton distributions (PDF) in bound nucleons in the context of global PDF fits. Our results are consistent with the ones obtained earlier from the study of the ratios of DIS structure functions $F_2^A/F_2^D$ in nuclei with $A\geq4$, confirming the universality of the off-shell function. We also discuss the sensitivity to various models of the deuteron wave function and the impact of nuclear corrections on the determination of the $d$ quark distribution.