COMPASS experiment measurements of the gluon polarisation in nucleon, DeltaG/G are reviewed. Two different approaches based on tagging the Photon Gluon Fusion process are described. They rely on the open charm meson or high-p_T hadron pairs detection.
A new preliminary result of a gluon polarisation ΔG/G obtained selecting high transverse momentum hadron pairs in DIS events with Q^2>1 (GeV/c)^2 is presented. Data has been collected by COMPASS at CERN during the 2002-2004 years. In the extraction of $ΔG/G$ contributions coming from the leading order $γq$ and QCD processes are taken into account. A new weighting method based on a neural network approach is used. Also a preliminary result of ΔG/G for events with Q^2<1 (GeV/c)^2 is presented.
One of the missing keys in the present understanding of the spin structure of the nucleon is the contribution from the gluons: the so-called gluon polarisation. This quantity can be determined in DIS through the photon-gluon fusion process, in which two analysis methods may be used: (i) identifying open charm events or (ii) selecting events with high p_T hadrons. The data used in the present work were collected in the COMPASS experiment, where a 160 GeV/c naturally polarised muon beam, impinging on a polarised nucleon fixed target is used. Preliminary results for the gluon polarisation from hi…
One of the goals of the COMPASS experiment is the determination of the gluon polarisation ΔG/G, for a deep understanding of the spin structure of the nucleon. In DIS the gluon polarisation can be measured via the Photon-Gluon-Fusion (PGF) process, identified by open charm production or by selecting high p_T hadron pairs in the final state. The data used for this work were collected by the COMPASS experiment during the years 2002-2004, using a 160 GeV naturally polarised positive muon beam scattering on a polarised nucleon target. A new preliminary result of the gluon polarisation ΔG/G from hig…
One of the goals of COMPASS experiment is the determination of the gluon polarisation, ΔG/G, for a deep understanding of the spin structure of the nucleon. The gluon polarisation can be measured via the Photon-Gluon-Fusion (PGF) process. One of the methods to identify this process is selecting high p_T hadron pairs in the final state. The data used for this analysis were collected by the COMPASS experiment during the years 2002 to 2006, using a 160 GeV naturally polarised positive muon beam impinging on a polarised nucleon target. A new result of ΔG/G from high p_T hadron pairs in events with …
One of the main goals of the COMPASS experiment at CERN is the determination of the gluon polarisation in the nucleon, Delta G/G. It is determined from spin asymmetries in the scattering of 160 GeV/c polarised muons on a polarised LiD target. The gluon polarisation is accessed by the selection of photon-gluon fusion (PGF) events. A very clean selection of PGF events can be obtained with charmed mesons in the final state. Their detection is based on the reconstruction of D* and D0 mesons in the COMPASS spectrometer. The analysis method for the first measurement of Delta G/G from the open charm …
The COMPASS experiment will determine the gluon polarization in the nucleon $ΔG/G$ from the double helicity asymmetry measured in the scattering of a 160 GeV muon beam on a longitudinally polarized deuteron target, by selecting the photon-gluon fusion reaction. This reaction can be tagged either by the production of open charm, or by the production of high $p_T$ hadron pairs. The first asymmetry obtained with the latter method is presented.
One of the key objectives of the COMPASS experiment at CERN is the determination of the gluon contribution to the nucleon spin. The gluon polarization is measured via photon-gluon fusion in deep-inelastic scattering of 160 GeV/c polarized muons on a polarized 6LiD solid-state target. Photon-gluon fusion is tagged by the observation of charmed mesons or the production of hadron pairs with large transverse momenta p_t. The status of the analysis of the D0 and D0* events and of the high-p_t hadron pairs is shown. The gluon polarization ΔG/G has been determined from the asymmetry of high-p_t hadro…
One of the main goals of the COMPASS experiment at CERN is the determination of the gluon contribution to the nucleon spin. To achieve this goal COMPASS uses a naturally polarised muon beam with an energy of 160 GeV and a fixed polarised target. Two types of materials are used for the latter: $^{6}$LiD (polarised deuterons) during the years of 2002-2006 and NH$_{3}$ (polarised protons) in 2007. The gluons in the nucleon can be accessed directly via the Photon Gluon Fusion (PGF) process. Among the channels studied by COMPASS, the production of charmed mesons is the one that tags a PGF interacti…
In the polarised Drell-Yan experiment at the COMPASS facility in CERN pion beam with momentum of 190 GeV/c and intensity about $10^8$ pions/s interacted with transversely polarised NH$_3$ target. Muon pairs produced in Drel-Yan process were detected. The measurement was done in 2015 as the 1st ever polarised Drell-Yan fixed target experiment. The hydrogen nuclei in the solid-state NH$_3$ were polarised by dynamic nuclear polarisation in 2.5 T field of large-acceptance superconducting magnet. Large helium dilution cryostat was used to cool the target down below 100 mK. Polarisation of hydrogen …
The recently proposed COMPASS experiment at CERN attempts a measurement of the gluon polarisation with a precision of delta(Delta g/g) = 0.1. The experiment uses open charm muoproduction to tag the photon-gluon fusion process.
One of the main goals of the COMPASS experiment at CERN is the determination of the gluon polarisation in the nucleon, DeltaG/G. It is extracted from the spin asymmetry in the scattering of a polarized 160 GeV muon beam on a polarized LiD target, by selecting photon-gluon fusion events. These events are tagged by the production of open charm or high pT hadron pairs. We present the results obtained for DeltaG/G(x) in both channels. For the first time, preliminary results of 2004 data in the high pT channel are also shown.
One of the important goals of the COMPASS experiment is the determination of the gluonic contribution to the spin of the nucleon. By using the photon gluon fusion (PGF) process in polarised deep inelastic scattering direct access to the gluon polarisation can be obtained. The PGF is selected via the detection of open charm or high $p_T$ hadron pairs. In 2001 a large part of the experiment had been setup and during a two weeks period first data was taken. In this paper some achievements of the run in 2001 are presented together with first preliminary analysis results.
We present the first measurement of the gluon polarisation in the nucleon based on the photon-gluon fusion process tagged by charmed meson production and decay to charged K and pi. The data were collected in polarised muon scattering off a polarised deuteron target by the COMPASS collaboration at CERN during 2002-2004. The result of this LO analysis is <Delta g/g>_x = -0.47 +- 0.44 (stat) +- 0.15 (syst) at <x> ~= 0.11 and a scale mu^2 ~ 13 (GeV/c)^2.
The gluon polarisation in the nucleon has been determined by detecting charm production via D0 meson decay to charged K and pi in polarised muon scattering off a longitudinally polarised deuteron target. The data were taken by the COMPASS Collaboration at CERN between 2002 and 2006 and corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 2.8 fb^-1. The dominant underlying process of charm production is the photon-gluon fusion to a cc-bar pair. A leading order QCD approach gives an average gluon polarisation of (Delta g/g)_x= -0.49 +- 0.27(stat) +- 0.11(syst) at a scale mu^2 ~ 13 (GeV/c)^2 and at an aver…
The gluon polarization $Δ{G}/G$ is the key to a further clarification of the spin structure of the nucleon. The COMPASS collaboration at CERN has set out to undertake the direct determination of this quantity. It accesses the gluon distribution via the photon-gluon fusion process (PGF) in scattering polarized muons off a polarized deuteron target. And it explores three different channels to tag the PGF: open charm production and high transverse momentum (high p_T), in either electroproduction (Q^2 > 1 GeV^2) or quasi-real photoproduction (Q^2 < 1 GeV^2). The high p_T quasi-real photoproduction…
Measurements of the longitudinal spin cross section asymmetry for deep inelastic muon-nucleon interactions with two high transverse momentum hadrons ($p_T >$ 0.7 GeV) in the final state are presented for SMC data for polarized proton and deuteron and for data on polarized deuteron from COMPASS taken in 2002 and 2003. The muon asymmetries determined with a cut on $Q^2>$ 1 GeV$^2$ in SMC are: $A_p = 0.03 \pm 0.057\pm 0.01$ and $A_d = 0.070 \pm 0.076 \pm 0.010$, respectively. From these values a gluon polarization $ΔG /G = -0.20\pm 0.28\pm 0.10$ was obtained at an average fraction of nucleon mome…
COMPASS is a running fixed-target experiment at the CERN SPS with a rich physics program focused on nucleon spin structure and on hadron spectroscopy. One of the main goals of the spin program is the measurement of the transverse spin effects in semi-inclusive DIS off transversely polarised nucleons. In the years 2002, 2003 and 2004 data have been taken using a 160 $GeV/c$ naturally polarised $μ^{+}$ beam and a deuterium target ($^{6}LiD$) transversely polarised respect to the beam direction. In 2007 the run year has been devoted to collect data with a proton ($NH_{3}$) target. The preliminary…
We present a preliminary measurement of the gluon polarization Delta G/G in the nucleon, based on the spin asymmetry of quasi-real photoproduction events for which a pair of large transverse momentum hadrons is produced. The data were obtained by the COMPASS experiment at CERN using a 160 GeV polarized muon beam scattered on a large polarized 6LiD target. The preliminary helicity asymmetry for the selected events is A_||/D = 0.002 +- 0.019(stat) +- 0.003(syst). From this value, a leading order analysis based on the model of PYTHIA leads to the gluon polarization in the nucleon Delta G/G(x_g=0.…
One of the main aims of the COMPASS experiment at CERN is the study of the spin structure of the nucleon and in particular the determination of the gluon polarization in the nucleon. We present some new results of 2002-2003 data analysis. They concern a precise measurement of the deuteron structure function g1 at small x, some preliminary result on Collins and Sivers asymmetries which are linked to transversity and a new measurement of DeltaG/G.
Measurements of the gluon polarization $\frac{ΔG}{G}$ via the open charm channel and based on the helicity asymmetry of large transverse-momentum hadrons in the final state are presented. The data have been collected in the years 2002-2004 by the COMPASS experiment at CERN using a 160 GeV/c polarized muon beam scattered off a polarized $^6$LiD target. The new result for $\frac{ΔG}{G}$ from the charm channel is $-0.57 \pm 0.41 (stat.)$ at $x_G \simeq 0.15$ and scale $μ^2 \simeq 13 $ (GeV/c)$^2$. The gluon polarization from high-$p_T$ hadron pairs is $\frac{ΔG}{G} = 0.016\pm 0.058 (stat.)\pm 0.0…
The COMPASS experiment is a fixed target experiment at the CERN SPS using muon and hadron beams for the investigation of the spin structure of the nucleon and hadron spectroscopy. The main objective of the muon physics program is the study of the spin of the nucleon in terms of its constituents, quarks and gluons. COMPASS has accumulated data during 6 years scattering polarized muons off a longitudinally or a transversely polarized deuteron (6LiD) or proton (NH3) target. Results for the gluon polarization are obtained from longitudinal double spin cross section asymmetries using two different …
The HERMES and SMC experiments have determined the contribution of different quark flavors to the nucleon spin in a large range of Bjorken-x via semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering. The main goal of the COMPASS experiment is to measure the gluon polarization in the nucleon. In all experiments a polarized lepton is scattered off a polarized nucleon. Latest results from HERMES and perspectives for COMPASS running in 2001 and beyond are presented.
Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD), the theory of strong interactions, in principle describes the interaction of quark and gluon fields. However, due to the self-coupling of the gluons, quarks and gluons are confined into hadrons and cannot exist as free particles. The quantitative understanding of this confinement phenomenon, which is responsible for about 98\% of the mass of the visible universe, is one of the major open questions in particle physics. The measurement of the excitation spectrum of hadrons and of their properties gives valuable input to theory and phenomenology. In the Constituent Q…
The nucleon spin structure is studied at COMPASS via the measurement of the spin dependent properties of deep inelastic muon-deuteron scattering. Both inclusive and semi-inclusive observables are investigated, with the emphasis put on the latter. This allows to access, in particular, the gluon polarization ($ΔG/G$) and the flavor decomposition of the quark helicity distributions. Results from measurements with longitudinal target polarization are presented, as well as uncertainties expected from the first 3 years of data taking.
The COMPASS experiment at the CERN SPS investigates the structure and spectrum of hadrons by scattering high energetic hadrons and polarised muons off various fixed targets. During the years 2002-2007, COMPASS focused on nucleon spin physics using 160 GeV/c polarised $μ^+$ beams on polarised deuteron and proton targets, including measurements of the gluon contribution to the nucleon spin using longitudinal target polarisation as well as studies of transverse spin effects in the nucleon on a transversely polarised target. One major goal of the physics programme using hadron beams is the search …
The COMPASS experiment has obtained first physics results in the field of polarized distribution functions for quarks and gluons using muon scattering off polarized deuterons. The analysis using open charm production and pairs of high $p_T$ hadrons is presented. We also have used a transversely polarized target to address transverse information for quarks inside the nucleon. In addition, a pilot run with incoming pions taken late 2004 will give first information on the pion polarizabilities and hadron resonances. The physics prospects from this run as well as from future data taking in this fi…
The impact of the recent very precise CLAS and COMPASS g_1/F_1 data on polarized parton densities and higher twist effects is discussed. We demonstrate that the low Q^2 CLAS data improve essentially our knowledge of higher twist corrections to the spin structure function g1, while the large Q^2 COMPASS data influence mainly the strange quark and gluon polarizations which slightly decrease. We find also that the present inclusive DIS data cannot rule out a negative polarized and changing in sign gluon densities.
Generalized parton distributions (GPDs) provide a new and powerful framework for a complete description of the nucleon structure. They can provide a three-dimensional picture of how the quarks and gluons form a nucleon. GPDs can be probed experimentally in hard exclusive meson production or deeply virtual Compton scattering (DVCS). The COMPASS experiment at CERN is a unique place to study these reactions. At COMPASS, a high energy polarized positive or negative muon beam is scattered off a polarized or unpolarized fixed target. First results for exclusive rho^0 meson production are shown. The …
The COMPASS Experiment at the CERN SPS has a broad physics program focused on the nucleon spin structure and on hadron spectroscopy, using muon and hadron beams. Main objectives for the spin program with the muon beam are the direct measurement of the gluon contribution to the spin of the nucleon, semi-inclusive measurements, and the measurement of the transverse spin distribution $Δ_T q$. The COMPASS apparatus consists of a two-stage large acceptance spectrometer designed for high data rates and equipped with high-resolution tracking, particle identification and electromagnetic and hadronic c…
COMPASS is a new fixed target experiment presently in operation at CERN. It has the goal to investigate hadron structure and hadron spectroscopy by using either muon or hadron beams. From measurements of various hadron asymmetries in polarized muon - nucleon scattering it will be possible to determine the contribution of the gluons to the nucleon spin. Main objective of the hadron program is the search of exotic states, and glueballs in particular. This physics programme is carried out with a two-stage magnetic spectrometer, with particle identification and calorimetry in both stages, which ha…
At COMPASS DVCS and DVMP processes are studied in order to probe the partonic structure of the nucleon by constraining GPD models. Extending beyond semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering, the measurement of lepton-induced exclusive reactions enables the study of GPDs, which ultimately reveal the three dimensional picture of the nucleon and the decomposition of its total angular momentum. Exploiting the flavour filtering character of DVMP measurements, the COMPASS experiment is able to access different combinations of quark and gluon GPDs by determining the cross sections for various mesons. …
Our present information on the gluon polarisation Delta g/g is reviewed. The data from fixed-target lepton-nucleon experiments are in context with the recent data from the RHIC polarised pp collider. The main tools to study Delta g/g in lepton-nucleon scattering are scaling violations of the g_1 structure functions and longitudinal spin asymmetries in hadron production. Results from high-p_T hadron pairs, inclusive hadrons as well as open-charm production are discussed. At RHIC the most precise data presently came from inclusive pi^0 and jet production. All data indicate that the gluon polaris…
The gluon polarisation in the nucleon was measured using open charm production by scattering 160 GeV/c polarised muons off longitudinally polarised protons or deuterons. The data were taken by the COMPASS collaboration between 2002 and 2007. A detailed account is given of the analysis method that includes the application of neural networks. Several decay channels of D^0 mesons are investigated. Longitudinal spin asymmetries of the D meson production cross-sections are extracted in bins of D^0 transverse momentum and energy. At leading order QCD accuracy the average gluon polarisation is determ…
We present a determination of the gluon polarization Delta G/G in the nucleon, based on the helicity asymmetry of quasi-real photoproduction events, Q^2<1(GeV/c)^2, with a pair of large transverse-momentum hadrons in the final state. The data were obtained by the COMPASS experiment at CERN using a 160 GeV polarized muon beam scattered on a polarized 6-LiD target. The helicity asymmetry for the selected events is <A_||/D> = 0.002 +- 0.019(stat.) +- 0.003(syst.). From this value, we obtain in a leading-order QCD analysis Delta G/G=0.024 +- 0.089(stat.) +- 0.057(syst.) at x_g = 0.095 and mu^2 =~ …
In order to understand the gluon contribution to the nucleon spin, some experiments can study the production of hadrons at high transverse momemtum from lepton-nucleon or nucleon-nucleon scattering. RHIC has recently measured such double spin asymmetries $A_{LL}(p_T)$ for pion production at high center of mass energies, and inclusion of its data to global fits based on NLO collinear pQCD calculations gives some constraints on the gluon polarization in the range $0.05<x_g<0.2$. To complement these results at COMPASS range, we will present preliminary COMPASS results on double longitudinal spin …
We present a determination of the gluon polarisation Delta g/g in the nucleon, based on the longitudinal double-spin asymmetry of DIS events with a pair of large transverse-momentum hadrons in the final state. The data were obtained by the COMPASS experiment at CERN using a 160 GeV/c polarised muon beam scattering off a polarised ^6LiD target. The gluon polarisation is evaluated by a Neural Network approach for three intervals of the gluon momentum fraction x_g covering the range 0.04 < x_g < 0.27. The values obtained at leading order in QCD do not show any significant dependence on x_g. Their…
We propose measurement of transverse single spin asymmetry (SSA) in charmonium production as a probe of gluon Sivers function. We estimate SSA in low virtuality electroproduction of $J/ψ$ using color evaporation model of charmonium production and existing models of the gluon Sivers function and find sizable asymmetry at JLab, HERMES, COMPASS and eRHIC energies.
We update the study of the polarisation of J/psi produced in proton-proton collisions at RHIC at sqrt(s)=200 GeV using the QCD-based Colour-Singlet Model (CSM), including next-to-leading order partonic matrix elements from gluon and light quark fusion and leading-order contributions from charm-quark initiated processes. To do so, we also evaluate the corresponding cross section differential in P_T which agrees qualitatively with the measurements of PHENIX in the central and forward regions at low P_T -- for instance below 2 GeV --, while emphasising the need for Initial State Radiation (ISR) r…
Since Quantum Choromdynamics allows for gluon self-coupling, quarks and gluons cannot be observed as free particles, but only their bound states, the hadrons. This so-called confinement phenomenon is responsible for $98\%$ of the mass in the visible universe. The measurement of the hadron excitation spectra therefore gives valuable input for theory and phenomenology to quantitatively understand this phenomenon. One simple model to describe hadrons is the Constituent Quark Model (CQM), which knows two types of hadrons: mesons, consisting of a quark and an antiquark, and baryons, which are made …
We make a first crude direct estimate of the net gluon polarization in the proton, DeltaG, combining data on the asymmetries in high-p_T hadron production from the HERMES, SMC and COMPASS collaborations. Although these data sample a restricted range of x, they provide no hint that DeltaG is large. Fixing the normalizations of different theoretical parametrizations using the hadron asymmetry data, we find typical central values of DeltaG \sim 0.5, with uncertainties of similar magnitude. Values of DeltaG \ge 2 are disfavoured by Delta chi^2 \sim 9 to 20, depending on the parametrization used.
The longitudinal polarisation transfer from muons to lambda and anti-lambda hyperons, D_LL, has been studied in deep inelastic scattering off an unpolarised isoscalar target at the COMPASS experiment at CERN. The spin transfers to lambda and anti-lambda produced in the current fragmentation region exhibit different behaviours as a function of x and xF . The measured x and xF dependences of D^lambda_LL are compatible with zero, while D^anti-lambda_LL tends to increase with xF, reaching values of 0.4 - 0.5. The resulting average values are D^lambda_LL = -0.012 +- 0.047 +- 0.024 and D^anti-lambda…
Using a novel analysis technique, the gluon polarisation in the nucleon is re-evaluated using the longitudinal double-spin asymmetry measured in the cross section of semi-inclusive single-hadron muoproduction with photon virtuality $Q^2>1~({\rm GeV}/c)^2$. The data were obtained by the COMPASS experiment at CERN using a 160 GeV/$c$ polarised muon beam impinging on a polarised $^6$LiD target. By analysing the full range in hadron transverse momentum $p_{\rm T}$, the different $p_{\rm T}$-dependences of the underlying processes are separated using a neural-network approach. In the absence of pQC…
Based on the observation of sizeable target-transverse-spin asymmetries in single-hadron and hadron-pair production in Semi-Inclusive measurements of Deep Inelastic Scattering (SIDIS), the chiral-odd transversity quark distribution functions $h_1^q$ are nowadays well established. Several possible channels to access these functions were originally proposed. One candidate is the measurement of the polarisation of $Λ$ hyperons produced in SIDIS off transversely polarised nucleons, where the transverse polarisation of the struck quark might be transferred to the final-state hyperon. In this articl…
There is serious disagreement between the predictions of Non-Relativistic Quantum Chromodynamics (NRQCD) and the data on $J/ψ$ polarisation which has persisted for almost a quarter of a century. We find that if we account for the effect of perturbative soft gluons on the intermediate charm-anticharm octet states in NRQCD then the polarisation problem can be resolved. In addition, this model, when used to fit the Run 1 data on $J/ψ$ and $ψ'$ production from the CDF experiment at Tevatron, gives good fits and yields values of (energy-independent) non-perturbative parameters. These, in turn, can …
In the past few years, a lot of evidences have been accumulated, which indicate that the gluon polarization inside the nucleon is likely to be small at least at the low renormalization scales. On the other hand, the recent lattice QCD analyses suggest that the net orbital angular momentum carried by the quarks is nearly zero. There is also some indication noticed by Brodsky and Gardner based on the COMPASS observation of small single-spin asymmetry on the isoscalar deuteron target, that the gluon orbital angular momentum inside the nucleon is likely to be small. Naively combining all these obs…
The Sivers function describes the correlation between the transverse spin of a nucleon and the transverse motion of its partons. It was extracted from measurements of the azimuthal asymmetry of hadrons produced in semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering of leptons off transversely polarised nucleon targets, and it turned out to be non-zero for quarks. In this letter the evaluation of the Sivers asymmetry for gluons in the same process is presented. The analysis method is based on a Monte Carlo simulation that includes three hard processes: photon-gluon fusion, QCD Compton scattering and leadi…
We measured the longitudinal double spin asymmetries $A_{LL}$ for single hadron muo-production off protons and deuterons at photon virtuality $Q^2$ < 1(GeV/$\it c$)$^2$ for transverse hadron momenta $p_T$ in the range 0.7 GeV/$\it c$ to 4 GeV/$\it c$ . They were determined using COMPASS data taken with a polarised muon beam of 160 GeV/$\it c$ or 200 GeV/$\it c$ impinging on polarised $\mathrm{{}^6LiD}$ or $\mathrm{NH_3}$ targets. The experimental asymmetries are compared to next-to-leading order pQCD calculations, and are sensitive to the gluon polarisation $ΔG$ inside the nucleon in the range…