Progress towards a lattice determination of (moments of) nucleon structure functions

Abstract Using unimproved and non-perturbatively O ( a ) improved Wilson fermions, results are given for the three lowest moments of unpolarised nucleon structure functions. Renormalisation, chiral extrapolation and the continuum limit of the matrix elements are briefly discussed. The simulations are performed for both quenched and two flavours of unquenched fermions. No obvious sign of deviation from linearity in the chiral extrapolations are found. (This is most clearly seen in our quenched unimproved data, which extends to lighter quark mass.) Possible quenching effects also seem to be small. The lowest moment thus remains too large, so it seems to be necessary to reach smaller quark masses in numerical simulations.