Comment on the A dependence of quasielastic deuteron knockout from nuclei

The A dependence recently measured in an experiment of our group in full kinematics for quasielastic deuteron knockout by pions revealed that the effective number of quasideuterons in a nucleus is independent of its atomic number. This result differs strongly from the A dependence measured in experiments that studied quasielastic inclusive deuteron knockout by protons, in which case one observes an A 0.33 power-law dependence. Calculations performed on the basis of a simple deuteron-knockout model show that stronger absorptive effects in measurements under conditions of full kinematics may indeed lead to this change in the A dependence.