Left-right asymmetry for pion and kaon production in the semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering process

Abstract

We analyze the left-right asymmetry in the semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering (SIDIS) process without introducing any weighting functions. With the current theoretical understanding, we find that the Sivers effect plays a key role in our analysis. We use the latest parametrization of the Sivers and fragmentation functions to reanalyze the $\ddot{I}{€}^{\pm }$ production process and find that the results are sensitive to the parametrization. We also extend our calculation on the $K^{\pm }$ production, which can help us know more about the Sivers distribution of the sea quarks and the unfavored fragmentation processes. HERMES kinematics with a proton target, COMPASS kinematics with a proton, deuteron, and neutron target (the information on the neutron target can be effectively extracted from the ${}^3$He target), and JLab kinematics (both 6 GeV and 12 GeV) with a proton and neutron target are considered in our paper.

7 latex pages, 11 figures, final version for publication, with references updated