We review recent progress in studies of nuclear final-state interactions in
deep inelastic scattering (DIS) off the lightest nuclei tagged by a recoil
nucleon. These processes hold a lot of potential for resolving the outstanding
issues related to the dynamics of hadronization in QCD. Within the minimal Fock
component framework, valid at large Bjorken x, the main features of the
theoretical approach based on the virtual nucleon approximation are elaborated.
In this approach, the strong final-state interaction of the DIS products with
the nuclear fragments is described by an effective eikonal amplitude, whose
parameters can be extracted from the analysis of semi-inclusive DIS off the
deuteron target. The extraction of the Q2 and W mass dependences of these
parameters gives a new observable in studying the QCD structure of DIS final
states. Another important feature of tagged DIS off the lightest nuclei is the
possibility of performing pole extrapolation with a high degree of accuracy.
Such extrapolation allows an extraction of the neutron structure function in a
model independent way due to suppression of the final-state interaction in the
on-shell limit of the struck nucleon propagator. We review the first
application of the pole extrapolation to recent experimental data. Finally, we
outline the extension of the framework to inclusive DIS, including a polarized
deuteron target as well as its application to the tagged DIS reactions for
future experiments at fixed target and collider energies.Comment: 36 pages, final version accepted in Int. J. Mod. Phys. E. Minor
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