Azimuthal asymmetries of charged hadrons produced by high-energy muons scattered off longitudinally polarised deuterons

Azimuthal asymmetries in semi-inclusive production of positive (h⁺) and negative hadrons (h^-) have been measured by scattering 160 GeV muons off longitudinally polarised deuterons at CERN. The asymmetries were decomposed in several terms according to their expected modulation in the azimuthal angle φ of the outgoing hadron. Each term receives contributions from one or several spin and transverse-momentum-dependent parton distribution and fragmentation functions. The amplitudes of all φ-modulation terms of the hadron asymmetries integrated over the kinematic variables are found to be consistent with zero within statistical errors, while the constant terms are nonzero and equal for h⁺ and h^- within the statistical errors. The dependencies of the φ-modulated terms versus the Bjorken momentum fraction x, the hadron fractional momentum z, and the hadron transverse momentum P^Th were studied. The x dependence of the constant terms for both positive and negative hadrons is in agreement with the longitudinal double-spin hadron asymmetries, measured in semi-inclusive deep-inelastic scattering. The x dependence of the sin φ-modulation term is less pronounced than that in the corresponding HERMES data. All other dependencies of the φ-modulation amplitudes are consistent with zero within the statistical errors. © 2010 The Author(s).

Duke Scholars

Author Anselm G. Vossen Physics