QCD corrections to longitudinal spin asymmetries in $W^{\pm }$-boson production at RHIC

Abstract

The polarized antiquark distributions in the proton can be measured by studying spin asymmetries in vector boson production in longitudinally polarized proton-proton collisions. The STAR and PHENIX experiments at BNL RHIC have reported first observations of single spin asymmetries in $W^{\pm }$-production most recently. We compute the QCD corrections to single and double spin asymmetries, taking account of the leptonic decay of the $W^{\pm }$ boson and of restrictions on the kinematical acceptance of the detectors. The QCD corrections have only a small impact on the asymmetries, such that a reliable extraction of the polarized antiquark distributions can be envisaged once more precise measurements are made.

LaTeX, 12 pages, typos corrected, references added

References in corpus (12)

• Parton distributions for the LHC
• New parton distributions for collider physics
• A first unbiased global NLO determination of parton distributions and their uncertainties
• Extraction of Spin-Dependent Parton Densities and Their Uncertainties
• The 3-, 4-, and 5-flavor NNLO Parton from Deep-Inelastic-Scattering Data and at Hadron Colliders
• QCD Analysis of the Polarized World Data
• QCD Analysis of Polarized Deep Inelastic Scattering Data
• Determination of gluon polarization from deep inelastic scattering and collider data
• Impact of CLAS and COMPASS data on Polarized Parton Densities and Higher Twist
• Cross Section and Parity Violating Spin Asymmetries of W^+/- Boson Production in Polarized p+p Collisions at sqrt(s)=500 GeV
• Measurement of the parity-violating longitudinal single-spin asymmetry for $W^{\pm }$ boson production in polarized proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s}=500$GeV
• Helicity Parton Distributions from Spin Asymmetries in W-Boson Production at RHIC

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Single-Spin Asymmetries in W Boson Production at Next-to-Leading Order
• Spin asymmetries for vector boson production in polarized p+p collisions
• General positivity bounds for spin observables in particle inclusive production
• Effect of sea quarks on the single-spin asymmetries $A_L^{W^{\pm }}$ in polarized pp collisions at RHIC