The STAR W Program : New Results and Future Measurements

Abstract

The production of $W^{\pm }$ bosons in longitudinally polarized p+p collisions at RHIC provides a new means of studying the spin-flavour asymmetries of the proton sea quark spin distributions. Details of the W${}^{\pm }$ event selection through the $e^{\pm }$ decay channel at mid-rapidity are presented, along with preliminary results for the production cross section and parity-violating single-spin asymmetry, $A_L$, from the STAR Collaboration's 2009 data set at $\sqrt{s}=500$ GeV. Lastly, the expected sensitivities for future running are discussed.

Lake Louise Winter Institute 2010, 15th-20th February 2010 Alberta, Canada