Perturbative Stability of the QCD Predictions for Single Spin Asymmetry in Heavy Quark Photoproduction

Abstract

We present the threshold resummation for the single spin asymmetry in heavy flavor production by linearly polarized photons. We analyze the soft-gluon contributions to the asymmetry at fixed order in ${\alpha }_s$ to the next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy. Our analysis shows that, contrary to the production cross section, the azimuthal asymmetry is practically insensitive to soft radiation. Our calculations of the asymmetry up to the 6th order in ${\alpha }_s$ lead only to small corrections (of order of few percent) to the Born predictions at energies of the fixed target experiments. Fast convergence of the perturbative series for the azimuthal asymmetry is due to the factorization properties of the photon-hadron cross section. We conclude that measurements of the single spin asymmetry would provide an excellent test of pQCD applicability to heavy flavor production.

RevTeX, 16 pages, 6 figures; a lot of new material has been added, including expanded discussions of the asymmetry at both parton and hadron levels; to appear in Nucl.Phys.B

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