Nuclear shadowing in inclusive and tagged deuteron structure functions and extraction of F₂^p - F₂ⁿ at small x from electron-deuteron collider data

We review predictions of the theory of leading twist nuclear shadowing for inclusive unpolarized and polarized deuteron structure functions F ₂^D, g₁^D and b₁ ^D and for the tagged deuteron structure function F₂ ^D (x, Q², p). We analyze the possibility to extract the neutron structure function F₂ⁿ from electron-deuteron data and demonstrate that an account of leading twist nuclear shadowing leads to large corrections for the extraction of F₂ⁿ from the future deuteron collider data both in the inclusive and in the tagged structure function modes. We suggest several strategies to address the extraction of F₂ⁿ and to measure at the same time the effect of nuclear shadowing via the measurement of the distortion of the proton spectator spectrum in the semi-inclusive eD → e′NX process. We address the issue of the final state interactions in the eD → e′NX process and examine how they affect the extraction of F₂ⁿ.