Results from PP2PP Experiment at RHIC

Abstract

We report on the first measurement of the single spin analyzing power ($A\_N$) at $\sqrt{s}=200$ GeV, obtained by the pp2pp experiment using polarized proton beams at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). Data points were measured in the four momentum transfer $t$ range $0.01\le |t|\le 0.03$ $\GeVcSq$. Our result is about one standard deviation above the calculation, which uses interference between electromagnetic spin-flip amplitude and hadronic non-flip amplitude, the source of $A\_N$. The difference could be explained by an additional contribution of a hadronic spin-flip amplitude to $A\_N$.

Talk presented at 11th International Conference on Elastic and Diffractive Scattering: Towards High Energy Frontiers: The 20th Anniversary of the Blois Workshops, Chateau de Blois, Blois, France, 15-20 May 2005