Confinement and scaling in deep inelastic scattering

We show that parton confinement in the final state generates large 1/Q² corrections of Bjorken scaling, thus leaving less room for the logarithmic corrections. In particular, the x-scaling violations at large x are entirely described in terms of power corrections. For treatment of these nonperturbative effects we derive a new expansion in powers of 1/Q² for the structure function that is free of infrared singularities and which reduces corrections to the leading term. The leading term represents scattering from an off-mass-shell parton which keeps the same virtual mass in the final state. It is found that this quasifree term is a function of a new variable x{}, which coincides with the Bjorken variable x for Q²{→}{∞}. The two variables are very different, however, at finite Q². In particular, the variable x{} depends on the invariant mass of the spectator particles. Analysis of the data at large x shows excellent scaling in the variable x{} and determines the value of the diquark mass to be close to zero. x{} scaling allows us to extract the structure function near the elastic threshold. It is found to behave as F₂{~}(1-x)3.7. Predictions for the structure functions based on x{} scaling are made.