Double-spin asymmetries for production of charged pions and kaons in semi-inclusive deep-inelastic muon scattering have been measured by the COMPASS experiment at CERN. The data, obtained by scattering a 160 GeV muon beam off a longitudinally polarised NH_3 target, cover a range of the Bjorken variable x between 0.004 and 0.7. A leading order evaluation of the helicity distributions for the three lightest quarks and antiquark flavours derived from these asymmetries and from our previous deuteron data is presented. The resulting values of the sea quark distributions are small and do not show any sizable dependence on x in the range of the measurements. No significant difference is observed between the strange and antistrange helicity distributions, both compatible with zero. The integrated value of the flavour asymmetry of the helicity distribution of the light-quark sea, Δu-bar - Δd-bar, is found to be slightly positive, about 1.5 standard deviations away from zero.
First measurements of the Collins and Sivers asymmetries of charged hadrons produced in deep-inelastic scattering of muons on a transversely polarized 6-LiD target are presented. The data were taken in 2002 with the COMPASS spectrometer using the muon beam of the CERN SPS at 160 GeV/c. The Collins asymmetry turns out to be compatible with zero, as does the measured Sivers asymmetry within the present statistical errors.
We present a LO evaluation of helicity densities of valence, Δu_v+Δd_v, non-strange sea, Δ\bar{u}+Δ\bar{d}, and strange quarks, Δs (assumed to be equal to Δ\bar{s}). They have been obtained from the inclusive asymmetry A_{3,d} and the semi-inclusive asymmetries A^{π+}_{1,d}, A^{π-}_{1,d}, A^{K+}_{1,d}, A^{K-}_{1,d} measured in polarised deep inelastic muon-deuteron scattering. The full deuteron statistics of COMPASS (years 2002-2004 and 2006) has been used. The data cover the range Q^2 > 1 (GeV/c)^2 and 0.004<x<0.3. Both non-strange densities are found to be in a good agreement with previous m…
New high precision measurements of the Collins and Sivers asymmetries of charged hadrons produced in deep-inelastic scattering of muons on a transversely polarised 6LiD target are presented. The data were taken in 2003 and 2004 with the COMPASS spectrometer using the muon beam of the CERN SPS at 160 GeV/c. Both the Collins and Sivers asymmetries turn out to be compatible with zero, within the present statistical errors, which are more than a factor of 2 smaller than those of the published COMPASS results from the 2002 data. The final results from the 2002, 2003 and 2004 runs are compared with …
A set of measurements of azimuthal asymmetries in the production of pairs of identified hadrons in deep-inelastic scattering of muons on transversely polarised $^6$LiD (deuteron) and NH$_3$ (proton) targets is presented. All available data collected in the years 2002-2004 and 2007/2010 with the COMPASS spectrometer using a muon beam of 160 GeV/$c$ at the CERN SPS were analysed. The asymmetries provide access to the transversity distribution functions via a fragmentation function that in principle may be independently obtained from $e^+e^-$ annihilation data. Results are presented, discussed an…
The nuclear-mass dependence of azimuthal cross section asymmetries with respect to charge and longitudinal polarization of the lepton beam is studiedfor hard exclusive electroproduction of real photons. The observed beam-charge and beam-helicity asymmetries are attributed to the interference between the Bethe-Heitler and deeply virtual Compton scattering processes. For various nuclei, the asymmetries are extracted for both coherent and incoherent-enriched regions, which involve different (combinations of) generalized parton distributions. For both regions, the asymmetries are compared to those…
Azimuthal asymmetries in semi-inclusive production of positive (h^+) and negative hadrons (h^-) have been measured by scattering 160 GeV muons off longitudinally polarised deuterons at CERN. The asymmetries were decomposed in several terms according to their expected modulation in the azimuthal angle phi of the outgoing hadron. Each term receives contributions from one or several spin and transverse-momentum-dependent parton distribution and fragmentation functions. The amplitudes of all phi-modulation terms of the hadron asymmetries integrated over the kinematic variables are found to be cons…
We have measured the spin structure functions g2p and g2d and the virtual photon asymmetries A2p and A2d over the kinematic range 0.02 < x < 0.8 and 0.7 < Q^2 < 20 GeV^2 by scattering 29.1 and 32.3 GeV longitudinally polarized electrons from transversely polarized NH3 and 6LiD targets. Our measured g2 approximately follows the twist-2 Wandzura-Wilczek calculation. The twist-3 reduced matrix elements d2p and d2n are less than two standard deviations from zero. The data are inconsistent with the Burkhardt-Cottingham sum rule if there is no pathological behavior as x->0. The Efremov-Leader-Teryae…
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 momentum and helicity density distributions of the strange quark sea in the nucleon are obtained in leading order from charged-kaon production in deep-inelastic scattering on the deuteron. The distributions are extracted from spin-averaged K+/- multiplicities, and from K+/- and inclusive double-spin asymmetries for scattering of polarized positrons by a polarized deuterium target. The shape of the momentum distribution is softer than that of the average of the ubar and dbar quarks. In the region of measurement 0.02 < x < 0.6 and Q^2 > 1.0 GeV^2, the helicity distribution is zero within exp…
Polarized deep--inelastic scattering data on longitudinally polarized hydrogen and deuterium targets have been used to determine double spin asymmetries of cross sections. Inclusive and semi--inclusive asymmetries for the production of positive and negative pions from hydrogen were obtained in a re--analysis of previously published data. Inclusive and semi--inclusive asymmetries for the production of negative and positive pions and kaons were measured on a polarized deuterium target. The separate helicity densities for the up and down quarks and the anti--up, anti--down, and strange sea quarks…
Longitudinally polarized $p+p$ scattering experiments provide access to gluon polarization via measurement of the double helicity asymmetry, $A_{LL}$. At the completion of the 2013 RHIC running period, a significant dataset of $π^{0}$s corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 46 $\text{pb}^{-1}$ (2012) and 8 $\text{pb}^{-1}$ (2013) produced from polarized $p+p$ scattering at $\sqrt{s}=510$ GeV with an average beam polarization of approximately $50\%$ was acquired. The $π^{0}$ kinematics were measured via isolation cones by the STAR Forward Meson Spectrometer, an electromagnetic calorimeter…
Double-spin asymmetries in the cross section of electroproduction of $ρ^0$ and $ϕ$ mesons on the proton and deuteron are measured at the HERMES experiment. The photoabsorption asymmetry in exclusive $ρ^0$ electroproduction on the proton exhibits a positive tendency. This is consistent with theoretical predictions that the exchange of an object with unnatural parity contributes to exclusive $ρ^0$ electroproduction by transverse photons. The photoabsorption asymmetry on the deuteron is found to be consistent with zero. Double-spin asymmetries in $ρ^0$ and $ϕ$ meson electroproduction by quasi-rea…
Azimuthal Asymmetries in unpolarized SIDIS can be used to probe the transverse momentum of quarks inside the nucleon. Furthermore, they give access to the so-far unmeasured Boer-Mulders function. We report on the first measurement of azimuthal asymmetries of the SIDIS cross section from scattering of muons off a deuteron target.
Beam-helicity asymmetries for the two-pion-photoproduction reaction gamma + p --> p pi+ pi- have been studied for the first time in the resonance region for center-of-mass energies between 1.35 GeV and 2.30 GeV. The experiment was performed at Jefferson Lab with the CEBAF Large Acceptance Spectrometer using circularly polarized tagged photons incident on an unpolarized hydrogen target. Beam-helicity-dependent angular distributions of the final-state particles were measured. The large cross-section asymmetries exhibit strong sensitivity to the kinematics and dynamics of the reaction. The data a…
The strange quark helicity distribution Delta s(x)is derived at LO from the semi-inclusive and inclusive spin asymmetries measured by the COMPASS experiment at CERN. The significance of the results is found to depend critically on the ratio of the sbar and u quark fragmentation functions into positive kaons.
Azimuthal asymmetries in exclusive electroproduction of a real photon from an unpolarized deuterium target are measured with respect to beam helicity and charge. They appear in the distribution of these photons in the azimuthal angle phi around the virtual-photon direction, relative to the lepton scattering plane. The extracted asymmetries are attributed to either the deeply virtual Compton scattering process or its interference with the Bethe-Heitler process. They are compared with earlier results on the proton target. In the measured kinematic region, the beam-charge asymmetry amplitudes and…
We present a next-to-leading order QCD calculation of the cross section and longitudinal spin asymmetry in single-inclusive charged-lepton production, pp -> l X, at RHIC, where the lepton is produced in the decay of an electroweak gauge boson. Our calculation is presented in terms of a multi-purpose Monte-Carlo integration program that may be readily used to include experimental spin asymmetry data in a global analysis of helicity parton densities. We perform a toy global analysis, studying the impact of anticipated RHIC data on our knowledge about the polarized anti-quark distributions.
We propose to perform measurements of asymmetries of the Drell-Yan (DY) pairs production in collisions of non-polarized, longitudinally and transversally polarized protons and deuterons which provide an access to all leading twist collinear and TMD PDFs of quarks and anti-quarks in nucleons. The measurements of asymmetries in production of J/Ψand direct photons will be performed as well simultaneously with DY using dedicated triggers. The set of these measurements will supply complete information for tests of the quark-parton model of nucleons at the QCD twist-two level with minimal systematic…
Transverse spin physics is an important part of the scientific programme of the COMPASS experiment at CERN. The analysis of the data taken with the target polarized orthogonally to the 160 GeV/c muon beam momentum has allowed to measure for the first time the Collins and Sivers asymmetries of the deuteron. Both for the positive and the negative hadrons produced in semi-inclusive DIS the measured asymmetries are small and, within errors, compatible with zero. New results for charged pions and kaons are presented here.
The transverse momentum dependent helicity distributions of valence quarks are calculated in the light-cone diquark model by adopting two different approaches. We use the model results to analyze the $P_{h\perp}$-dependent double spin asymmetries for $π^+$, $π^-$ and $π^0$ productions in semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering, and find that the asymmetries agree with the CLAS data in one of the approaches. By taking the Fourier transform of the transverse momentum dependent helicity distributions, we obtain the helicity distributions of valence quarks in the transverse coordinate space, and …
Polarization properties of high energy photodisintegration of the deuteron are studied within the framework of the hard rescattering mechanism~(HRM). In HRM, a quark of one nucleon knocked-out by the incoming photon rescatters with a quark of the other nucleon leading to the production of two nucleons with high relative momentum. Summation of all relevant quark rescattering amplitudes allows us to express the scattering amplitude of the reaction through the convolution of a hard photon-quark interaction vertex, the large angle p-n scattering amplitude and the low momentum deuteron wave functio…
We study the beam single-spin asymmetries $A_{LU}^{\sinϕ_h}$ for charged hadrons produced in semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering process, by considering the $e H_1^\perp$ term and the $g^\perp D_1$ term simultaneously. Besides the asymmetries for charged pions, for the first time we present the analysis on the asymmetries in the production of charged kaons, protons and antiprotons by longitudinally polarized leptons scattered off unpolarized proton and deuteron targets. In our calculation we use two sets of transverse momentum dependent distributions $g^\perp(x,\bm k_T^2)$ and $e(x,\bm k_…
The deuteron is considered as a superposition of two-nucleon Fock states with the invariant mass depending on the relative momentum in a proton-neutron pair. The condition of the transversality of the polarization vectors should be imposed at the Fock component level and these vectors depend on the invariant mass of the Fock component. Such "running" longitudinal polarization vector was not used in early estimates of relativistic effects. The technique for the calculation of the average helicity of the proton in the deuteron has been considered in the light-cone variables. A receipt has been p…
The study of transverse spin and transverse momentum effects is an important part of the scientific program of COMPASS, a fixed target experiment at the CERN SPS taking data since 2002. The studies are carried on by measuring the hadrons produced in deep inelastic scattering (DIS) of 160 GeV/c muons off different targets. Among the possible asymmetries in the hadron azimuthal distributions, particularly interesting are the Collins and Sivers asymmetries which the COMPASS Collaboration has measured using transversely polarised deuteron and proton targets. The new results for charged pions and k…
A measurement of beam-helicity asymmetries for single-hadron production in deep-inelastic scattering is presented. Data from the scattering of 27.6 GeV electrons and positrons off gaseous hydrogen and deuterium targets were collected by the HERMES experiment. The asymmetries are presented separately as a function of the Bjorken scaling variable, the hadron transverse momentum, and the fractional energy for charged pions and kaons as well as for protons and anti-protons. These asymmetries are also presented as a function of the three aforementioned kinematic variables simultaneously.
Measurements of double helicity asymmetries for inclusive hadron production in polarized proton-proton collisions are sensitive to spin-dependent parton distribution functions, in particular to the gluon distribution function. This study focuses on double helicity asymmetries in eta and charged pion production at mid-rapidity, as well as on the eta cross section and fragmentation functions.
A comprehensive collection of results on longitudinal double-spin asymmetries is presented for charged pions and kaons produced in semi-inclusive deep-inelastic scattering of electrons and positrons on the proton and deuteron, based on the full HERMES data set. The dependence of the asymmetries on hadron transverse momentum and azimuthal angle extends the sensitivity to the flavor structure of the nucleon beyond the distribution functions accessible in the collinear framework. No strong dependence on those variables is observed. In addition, the hadron charge-difference asymmetry is presented,…
COMPASS is a fixed target experiment at CERN investigating the spin structure of the nucleon and performing hadron spectroscopy. The transverse spin structure of the nucleon is studied in semi-inclusive deep-inelastic scattering of 160 GeV/c muons off a transversely polarized proton or deuteron target. In 2002-2005, a transversely polarized 6LiD, and in 2007 a transversely polarized NH3 target were used. To get access to the transversity distribution, different single-spin asymmetries have been measured: the Collins asymmetry, the hadron-pair asymmetry and the transverse lambda polarization. I…
The analysis of semi-inclusive data from deep inelastic scattering of polarized muons off polarized protons and deuterons by the SMC is presented. The resulting charged hadron asymmetries are used to determine polarized valence and sea quark distributions and their contributions to the nucleon spin. In addition, a new approach to derive inclusive asymmetries is discussed.
We perform a comprehensive analysis of target mass corrections (TMCs) to spin-averaged structure functions and asymmetries at next-to-leading order. Several different prescriptions for TMCs are considered, including the operator product expansion, and various approximations to it, collinear factorization, and xi-scaling. We assess the impact of each of these on a number of observables, such as the neutron to proton F_2 structure function ratio, and parity-violating electron scattering asymmetries for protons and deuterons which are sensitive to gamma-Z interference effects. The corrections fro…
Measurements of double helicity asymmetries for inclusive hadron production in polarized proton-proton collisions are sensitive to spin-dependent parton distribution functions, in particular to the gluon distribution, Delta g. This study presents the double helicity asymmetry and the cross section for eta production. The cross section measurement yields valuable data for the extraction of the fragmentation functions, which are unknown at present but are a prerequisite for the extraction of the spin-dependent parton distribution functions.
We have measured the spin structure functions g2p and g2d and the virtual photon asymmetries A2p and A2d over the kinematic range 0.02 < x < 0.8 and 1.0 < Q^2 < 30(GeV/c)^2 by scattering 38.8 GeV longitudinally polarized electrons from transversely polarized NH3 and 6LiD targets.The absolute value of A2 is significantly smaller than the sqrt{R} positivity limit over the measured range, while g2 is consistent with the twist-2 Wandzura-Wilczek calculation. We obtain results for the twist-3 reduced matrix elements d2p, d2d and d2n. The Burkhardt-Cottingham sum rule integral - int(g2(x)dx) is repo…
In the list of the main items studied by the CERN COMPASS experiment there are the transverse spin and momentum effects visible in the azimuthal distributions of hadrons produced in the deep inelastic scattering. In the years 2002-2004 COMPASS has collected data with a 6LiD target with the polarization oriented transversely with respect to the muon beam direction for about 20% of the running time; in 2007, COMPASS has used for the first time a proton NH_3 target with the data taking time equally shared between longitudinal and transverse polarization of the target. After reviewing the results …
Double-spin asymmetries of semi-inclusive cross sections for the production of identified pions and kaons have been measured in deep-inelastic scattering of polarized positrons on a polarized deuterium target. Five helicity distributions including those for three sea quark flavors were extracted from these data together with re-analyzed previous data for identified pions from a hydrogen target. These distributions are consistent with zero for all three sea flavors. A recently predicted flavor asymmetry in the polarization of the light quark sea appears to be disfavored by the data.
The double helicity asymmetry in neutral pion production for p_T = 1 to 12 GeV/c has been measured with the PHENIX experiment in order to access the gluon spin contribution, Delta-G, to the proton spin. Measured asymmetries are consistent with zero, and at a theory scale of μ^2 = 4 GeV^2 give Delta-G^[0.02,0.3] = 0.1 to 0.2, with a constraint of -0.7 < Delta-G^[0.02,0.3] < 0.5 at Delta-chi^2 = 9 (~3 sigma) for our sampled gluon momentum fraction (x) range, 0.02 to 0.3. The results are obtained using predictions for our measured asymmetries generated from four representative fits to polarized d…
Beam-helicity and beam-charge asymmetries in the hard exclusive leptoproduction of real photons from an unpolarised hydrogen target by a 27.6 GeV lepton beam are extracted from the HERMES data set of 2006-2007 using a missing-mass event selection technique. The asymmetry amplitudes extracted from this data set are more precise than those extracted from the earlier data set of 1996-2005 previously analysed in the same manner by HERMES. The results from the two data sets are compatible with each other. Results from these combined data sets are extracted and constitute the most precise asymmetry …
The SPD experiment at the future NICA collider at JINR (Dubna, Russia) aims to investigate the nucleon spin structure and polarization phenomena in collisions of longitudinally and transversely polarized protons and deuterons at $\sqrt{s}$ up to 27 GeV and luminosity up to 10$^{32}$ cm$^{-2}$ s$^{-1}$. Measurement of asymmetries in the Drell-Yan pairs, charmonium and prompt photon production can provide an access to the full set of leading twist TMD PDFs in nucleons. The experimental setup is planned as a universal 4$π$ detector for a wide range of physics tasks.
Dihadron beam spin asymmetries provide a wide range of insights into nucleon structure and hadronization. Recent measurements at CLAS12 provide the first empirical evidence of nonzero $G_1^\perp$, the parton helicity-dependent dihadron fragmentation function (DiFF) encoding spin-momentum correlations in hadronization. These measurements also allow for a point-by-point extraction of the subleading-twist PDF $e(x)$ in a collinear framework. We observe different behavior of the asymmetries in different invariant mass regions, motivating a fully multidimensional study. The DiFFs also expand in ter…
Nucleon spin structure functions have been investigated mainly by longitudinally-polarized ones for finding the origin of the nucleon spin. Other types of spin structure functions are transversely-polarized ones. In particular, quark transversity distributions in the nucleons have very different properties from the longitudinally-polarized quark distribution functions, especially in scaling violation, because they are decoupled from the gluon transversity, due to the fact that they are helicity-flip (chiral-odd) distributions. Such studies are valuable for finding not only the origin of the nu…
We study the spin correlations to probe time-reversal~(T) asymmetries in the decays of $Λ_b \to ΛV ~(V=ϕ, ρ^0, ω, K^{*0})$. The eigenstates of the T-odd operators are obtained along with definite angular momenta. We obtain the T-odd spin correlations from the complex phases among the helicity amplitudes. We give the angular distributions of $Λ_b \to Λ(\to p π^-)V(\to PP')$ and show the corresponding spin correlations, where $P^{(\prime)}$ are the pseudoscalar mesons. Due to the helicity conservation of the $s$ quark in $Λ$, we deduce that the polarization asymmetries of $Λ$ are close to $-1$. …
The Gerasimov-Drell-Hearn (GDH) sum rule connects the anomalous contribution to the magnetic moment of the target nucleus with an energy-weighted integral of the difference of the helicity-dependent photoabsorption cross sections. The data collected by HERMES with a deuterium target are presented together with a re-analysis of previous measurements on the proton. This provides a measurement of the generalised GDH integral covering simultaneously the nucleon-resonance and the deep inelastic scattering regions. The contribution of the nucleon-resonance region is seen to decrease rapidly with inc…
New results on single spin asymmetries of identified charged pion and kaon pairs produced in deep-inelastic scattering of muons on a transversely polarized 6LiD target are presented. The data were taken in the years 2003 and 2004 with the COMPASS spectrometer at CERN with a 160 GeV muon beam from the CERN SPS accelerator. The asymmetries can be interpreted in the context of transversity as a convolution of the chiral-odd interference fragmentation function $H_1^\sphericalangle$ with the transverse spin distribution of quarks $Δ_Tq(x)$. The measured azimuthal target spin asymmetries on the deut…
The study of transverse spin and transverse momentum effects is an important part of the scientific program of COMPASS, a fixed target experiment at the CERN SPS. For these studies a 160 GeV/c momentum muon beam is scattered on a transversely polarized nucleon target, and the scattered muon and the forward going hadrons produced in DIS processes are reconstructed and identified in a magnetic spectrometer. The measurements have been performed on a deuteron target in 2002, 2003 and 2004, and on a proton target in 2007 and 2010. The results obtained for the Collins and Sivers asymmetries from the…
$W^\pm$ boson production in longitudinally polarized $p+p$ collisions provides unique and clean access to the individual helicity polarizations of $u$ / $d$ quarks and anti-quarks. Due to the maximal violation of parity in the coupling, $W$ bosons couple to left-handed quarks and right-handed anti-quarks and hence offer direct probes of their respective helicity distributions in the nucleon. These can be extracted from measured parity-violating longitudinal single-spin asymmetries, $A_L$, for $W^{+(-)}$ boson production as a function of the decay lepton (positron) pseudo-rapidity $η$. The STAR…
The parity-violating asymmetries between a longitudinally-polarized electron beam and an unpolarized deuterium target have been measured recently. The measurement covered two kinematic points in the deep inelastic scattering region and five in the nucleon resonance region. We provide here details of the experimental setup, data analysis, and results on all asymmetry measurements including parity-violating electron asymmetries and those of inclusive pion production and beam-normal asymmetries. The parity-violating deep-inelastic asymmetries were used to extract the electron-quark weak effective…
Measuring single spin asymmetries in semi-inclusive deep-inelastic scattering (SIDIS) on a transversely polarized target gives a handle to investigate the transversity distribution and transverse momentum dependent distribution functions. In the years 2002, 2003 and 2004 COMPASS took data with a transversely polarized deuteron target and in the year 2007 with a proton target. Three channels for accessing transversity have been analysed. Azimuthal asymmetries in the production of hadron pairs, involving the polarized two hadron interference fragmentation function, azimuthal asymmetries in the p…
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…
After reviewing the most important COMPASS results on transverse spin effects in SIDIS, I will present the recent work we have done on weighted Sivers asymmetries and "transversity induced" $Λ$ polarisation. Using the high statistics data collected in 2010 on a transversely polarised proton target COMPASS has evaluated the transverse momentum weighted Sivers asymmetries both in $x$- and in $z$-bins. The results are also compared with the standard unweighted asymmetries. Using the whole data sample collected over the years on transversely polarised deuteron and proton targets COMPASS has measur…
We study the single-spin asymmetries of pions produced in semi-inclusive deep-inelastic scattering on the longitudinally polarized nucleon targets. We particularly consider the effects of the twist-3 transverse-momentum dependent distribution functions $f_L^\perp$ and $h_L$ to the asymmetry. We calculate the asymmetric moment $A_{UL}^{\sinϕ_h}$ for $π^+$, $π^-$ and $π^0$ produced off the proton target at HERMES and compare the results with the HERMES data. We also present the prediction of the same asymmetries for different pions at the kinematics of CLAS 5.5 GeV on a proton target, as well as…
Differential cross sections and decay asymmetries for coherent $ϕ$-meson photoproduction from deuterons were measured for the first time at forward angles using linearly polarized photons at $E_γ$= 1.5-2.4 GeV. This reaction offers a unique way to directly access natural-parity Pomeron dynamics and gluon exchange at low energies. The cross sections at zero degrees increase with increasing photon energy. The decay asymmetries demonstrate a complete dominance of natural-parity exchange processes, showing that isovector unnatural-parity $π$-meson exchange is small. Nevertheless the deduced cross …
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 …
We present a Monte Carlo based analysis of the combined world data on polarized lepton-nucleon deep-inelastic scattering at small Bjorken $x$ within the polarized quark dipole formalism. We show for the first time that double-spin asymmetries at $x<0.1$ can be successfully described using only small-$x$ evolution derived from first-principles QCD, allowing predictions to be made for the $g_1$ structure function at much smaller $x$. Anticipating future data from the Electron-Ion Collider, we assess the impact of electromagnetic and parity-violating polarization asymmetries on $g_1$ and demonstr…
Spin asymmetries provide a wide range of insights into nucleon structure and hadronization. Recent measurements of beam spin asymmetries of $π^+π^-$ dihadrons from Semi-Inclusive Deep Inelastic Scattering (SIDIS) at CLAS12 provide the first empirical evidence of a nonzero $G_1^\perp$, the parton helicity-dependent Dihadron Fragmentation Function (DiFF) encoding spin-momentum correlations in hadronization. These measurements have been extended to aid in the characterization of $H_1^\perp$ and $H_1^\sphericalangle$, the DiFFs dependent on parton transverse spin, via a multidimensional partial wa…
Generalized Parton Distributions (GPDs) provide a dynamical picture of the nucleon. The exclusive production of $ρ^0$ mesons on a transversely polarised target is sensitive to the nucleon helicity-flip GPDs $E$ which are related to the total angular momentum of quarks and gluons. In 2007 and 2010 the COMPASS experiment at CERN collected data by scattering a 160 GeV/c muon beam off a transversely polarised NH$_3$ target. The final state particles were detected with the two-stage spectrometer with high resolution tracking. In this talk new results for the azimuthal asymmetries $A_{\text{UT}}$ an…
In semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering of polarized leptons on a transversely polarized target eight target transverse spin-dependent azimuthal modulations are allowed. In the QCD parton model half of these asymmetries can be interpreted within the leading order approach and the other four are twist-three contributions. The first two leading twist asymmetries extracted by HERMES and COMPASS experiments are related: one to the transversity distribution and the Collins effect, the other to the Sivers distribution function. These results triggered a lot of interest in the past few years and …
We discuss transversity distributions and transverse spin asymmetries. First, $Q^2$ evolution results are shown for transversity and longitudinally polarized distributions. Second, the antiquark flavor asymmetry $Δ_{_T} \bar u/Δ_{_T} \bar d$ is discussed in two different descriptions, a meson-cloud model and an exclusion model. Both calculations produce a significant $Δ_T \bar d$ excess over $Δ_{_T} \bar u$. Third, we explain general formalism of the polarized proton-deuteron Drell-Yan processes. This study is partly intended to find the asymmetry $Δ_{_T} \bar u/Δ_{_T} \bar d$ by the p-d asymm…
A study of top quark production at the future International Linear Collider, ILC, with a centre-of-mass energy of 500 GeV is presented. The emphasis is put on determining the sensitivity to physics beyond the Standard Model. The analysis has been carried out with a full simulation of the ILD detector. Both, the forward-backward asymmetry and the left-right asymmetry can be determined to a precision of about 1% to 1.5%. The analysis points out an ambiguity which arises in case of the production of top-quarks with left-handed helicity.
