Skip to main content
U.S. Department of Energy
Office of Scientific and Technical Information

Longitudinal parity-violating asymmetry in hadronic decays of weak bosons in polarized proton collisions.

Journal Article · · Phys. Rev. D
We investigate the possible measurement of parity-violating spin asymmetries in jet pair production in proton-proton collisions at the Brookhaven Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), with the goal to constrain longitudinally polarized quark and antiquark distribution functions. A measurable asymmetry could be observed in the vicinity of the massive weak W boson resonance, where the parity-violating signal appears above the parity-conserving background and is enhanced by interference of the strong and electroweak production amplitudes. We discuss the potential for such measurements, perhaps the first opportunity to measure a parity-violating asymmetry in proton-proton collisions at RHIC. Sensitivity of this measurement to the polarization of down-type antiquarks is demonstrated.
Research Organization:
Argonne National Laboratory (ANL)
Sponsoring Organization:
SC; NSF; Lightner-Sams Foundation
DOE Contract Number:
AC02-06CH11357
OSTI ID:
953461
Report Number(s):
ANL-HEP-PR-08-59
Journal Information:
Phys. Rev. D, Journal Name: Phys. Rev. D Journal Issue: Dec. 2008 Vol. 78; ISSN 1550-7998
Country of Publication:
United States
Language:
ENGLISH