2004/04/21 by Stephen Adler, the PHENIX Collaboration, S. Afanasiev +99 · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Quantum Chromodynamics and Particle Interactions #hep-ex
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.93.202002
published as Phys.Rev.Lett.93:202002,2004 · 326 authors, 6 pages text, RevTeX, 3 figures, 1 table. To be submitted to PRL. Plain text data tables for the points plotted in figures for this and previous PHENIX publications are (or will be) publicly available at http://www.phenix.bnl.gov/papers.html
arxiv created 2004/04/21 · openalex publication_date 2004/11/11 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We present a measurement of the double longitudinal spin asymmetry in inclusive pi(0) production in polarized proton-proton collisions at sqrt[s]=200 GeV. The data were taken at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider with average beam polarizations of 0.27. The measurements are the first in a program to study the longitudinal spin structure of the proton, using strongly interacting probes, at collider energies. The asymmetry is presented for transverse momenta 1-5 GeV/c at midrapidity, where next-to-leading-order perturbative quantum chromodynamic (NLO pQCD) calculations well describe the unpolarized cross section. The observed asymmetry is small and is compared to a NLO pQCD calculation with a range of polarized gluon distributions.