A_N in proton-proton collisions and the role of twist-3 fragmentation

¹ RIKEN BNL Research Center, Brookhaven National Laboratory, Upton, New York 11973, USA
² Graduate School of Science and Technology, Niigata University, Ikarashi, Niigata 950-2181, Japan
³ Department of Physics, Barton Hall, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19122, USA
⁴ Department of Physics, Niigata University, Ikarashi, Niigata, 950-2181, Japan

^a e-mail: dpitonyak@quark.phy.bnl.gov
^b e-mail: koichi.kanazawa@temple.edu
^c e-mail: koike@nt.sc.niigata-u.ac.jp
^d e-mail: metza@temple.edu

Published online: 23 January 2015

Abstract

We review and give an update on the current status of what causes transverse single-spin asymmetries (TSSAs) in semi-inclusive processes where a single hadron is detected in the final state, especially those involving proton-proton (pp) collisions. In particular, we provide a new analysis within collinear factorization of TSSAs in high transverse momentum charged and neutral pion production in pp collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). This study incorporates the so-called twist-3 fragmentation term and shows that one can describe RHIC data through this mechanism. Moreover, by fixing other non-perturbative inputs through extractions of transverse momentum dependent functions in e⁺e⁻ → h₁h₂X and semi-inclusive deep-inelastic scattering (SIDIS), we provide for the first time a consistency between certain spin/azimuthal asymmetries in all three reactions (i.e., pp, e⁺e⁻, and SIDIS).