The inclusive (e,e’) scattering from nuclei is studied with the assumption that the electromagnetic production of pions from the nucleon can be described by a model consisting of the conventional Born term and a Δ-excitation term. We show that the global features of the recent data of the inclusive ${}_{}{}^{12}{}_{}{}^{}\mathrm{C}$(e,e’) reaction in the GeV energy region can be described by the following procedures: (1) the parameters of the constructed one-body and two-body current operators are fitted to the total cross sections of γN→πN, p(e,e’), and γd→np; (2) the medium effect on the Δ propagation is treated according to the information extracted from the Δ-hole model calculation. It is found that the two-body mechanism of Δ annihilation by the nuclear medium improves the fit to the data in the ‘‘dip’’ region. The predicted magnitudes in the Δ region are lower than the data, indicating the importance of more complicated multinucleon mechanisms.

• Received 17 March 1988

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevC.38.2187