Speaker
Kenneth Barish
(UC Riverside)
Description
(for the PHENIX Collaboration)
Transverse single-spin asymmetries (TSSA) provide valuable information about
the spin structure of the nucleon. Here, we report results of TSSA in $\eta$ and single-muon production channels in p+p collision. Non-vanishing TSSA in eta meson production channel has been reported for Run-2008 data (Phys. Rev. D 90, 072008), in the forward rapidity region, which could be due to contributions from both the Sivers and the Collins effects. In single-muon production channel, gluon-gluon fusion dominates heavy-flavor meson production, which in turn provides the dominate source of high momentum single-muons. Therefore, TSSA of single-muon production provide an unique probe to access information on the gluon Sivers distribution. In Run-2012, the PHENIX experiment collected data of 9.2 $pb^{-1}$ integrated luminosity in transversely polarized $p+p$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 200 GeV with a polarization of $60\%$. The status and preliminary results of the analysis of transverse single-spin asymmetries of single muons at forward-rapidity will be presented.
Author
Kenneth Barish
(UC Riverside)