The quasielastic-two-body-scattering (QTBS) hypothesis is studied in the inclusive inelastic scattering of protons by nuclei. A sum rule and other quantitative tests are introduced to examine to what extent observed scaling is a confirmation of the QTBS assumptions. The scaling properties of electron-nucleus and proton-nucleus inelastic scattering reactions are compared. While the electron data generally scale well and satisfy the QTBS tests, there are several cases where the proton data do not scale well. Also the proton data are seen to fail some of the QTBS tests we have performed. This indicates that QTBS is not an effective mechanism for proton-nucleus inelastic scattering.

• Received 19 July 2000

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevC.65.054603