Saturation of nuclear partons: Fermi statistics or nuclear opacity?

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Abstract
We derive the two-plateau momentum distribution of final state (FS) quarks produced in deep inelastic scattering (DIS) off nuclei in the saturation regime. The diffractive plateau, which dominates for small p, measures precisely the momentum distribution of quarks in the beam photon; the role of the nucleus is simply to provide an opacity. The plateau for truly inelastic DIS exhibits a substantial nuclear broadening of the FS momentum distribution. We discuss the relationship between the FS quark densities and the properly defined initial state (IS) nuclear quark densities. The Weizsäcker-Williams glue of a nucleus exhibits a substantial nuclear dilution, still soft IS nuclear sea saturates because of the anti-collinear splitting of gluons into sea quarks.
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