Experimental Verification of Quark-Hadron Duality

A newly obtained sample of inclusive electron-nucleon scattering data has been analyzed for precision tests of quark-hadron duality. The data are in the nucleon resonance region, and span the range $0.3<\mathrm{}{Q}^2<5.0\mathrm{}(\mathrm{GeV}/c{)}^2$. Duality is observed both in limited and extended regions around the prominent resonance enhancements. Higher twist contributions to the $F_2$ structure function are found to be small on average, even in the low $Q^2$ regime of $\approx 0.5(\mathrm{GeV}/c{)}^2$. Using duality, an average scaling curve is obtained. In all cases, duality appears to be a nontrivial property of the nucleon structure function.