Measurement of inclusive spin structure functions of the deuteron

We report the results of a new measurement of spin structure functions of the deuteron in the region of moderate momentum transfer [Q²=0.27--1.3(GeV/c)²] and final hadronic state mass in the nucleon resonance region (W=1.08--2.0GeV). We scattered a 2.5 GeV polarized continuous electron beam at Jefferson Lab off a dynamically polarized cryogenic solid state target (¹⁵ND₃) and detected the scattered electrons with the CEBAF large acceptance spectrometer. From our data, we extract the longitudinal double spin asymmetry A|| and the spin structure function g₁ᵈ. Our data are generally in reasonable agreement with existing data from SLAC where they overlap, and they represent a substantial improvement in statistical precision. We compare our results with expectations for resonance asymmetries and extrapolated deep inelastic scaling results. Finally, we evaluate the first moment of the structure function g₁ᵈ and study its approach to both the deep inelastic limit at large Q² and to the Gerasimov-Drell-Hearn sum rule at the real photon limit (Q²→0). We find that the first moment varies rapidly in the Q² range of our experiment and crosses zero at Q² between 0.5 and 0.8(GeV/c)², indicating the importance of the Δ resonance at these momentum transfers.