We report on the first measurement of the spin-dependent structure function g1d of the deuteron in the deep inelastic scattering of polarised muons off polarised deuterons, in the kinematical range 0.006

HADES is a versatile magnetic spectrometer aimed at studying dielectron production in pion, proton and heavy-ion induced collisions. Its main features include a ring imaging gas Cherenkov detector for electron-hadron discrimination, a tracking system consisting of a set of 6 superconducting coils producing a toroidal field and drift chambers and a multiplicity and electron trigger array for additional electron-hadron discrimination and event characterization. A two-stage trigger system enhances events containing electrons. The physics program is focused on the investigation of hadron properties in nuclei and in the hot and dense hadronic matter. The detector system is characterized by an 85 % azimuthal coverage over a polar angle interval from 18• to 85• , a single electron efficiency of 50 % and a vector meson mass resolution of 2.5 %. Identification of pions, kaons and protons is achieved combining time-of-flight and energy loss measurements over a large momentum range. This paper describes the main features and the performance of the detector system.

We present the final results of the spin asymmetries A 1 and the spin structure functions g 1 of the proton and the deuteron in the kinematic range 0.0008ϽxϽ0.7 and 0.2ϽQ 2 Ͻ100 GeV 2 . For the determination of A 1 , in addition to the usual method which employs inclusive scattering events and includes a large radiative background at low x, we use a new method which minimizes the radiative background by selecting events with at least one hadron as well as a muon in the final state. We find that this hadron method gives smaller errors for xϽ0.02, so it is combined with the usual method to provide the optimal set of results.

We present a measurement of semi-inclusive spin asymmetries for positively and negatively charged hadrons from deep inelastic scattering of polarised muons on polarised protons and deuterons in the range 0.0031 GeV2. Compared to our previous publication on this subject, with the new data the statistical errors have been reduced by nearly a factor of two. From these asymmetries and our inclusive spin asymmetries we determine the polarised quark distributions of valence quarks and non-strange sea quarks at Q2=10 GeV2. The polarised u valence quark distribution, Δuv(x), is positive and the polarisation increases with x. The polarised d valence quark distribution, Δdv(x), is negative and the non-strange sea distribution, is consistent with zero over the measured range of x

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