We show that a new beam-spin asymmetry appears in deep inelastic inclusive lepto-production at low transverse momenta when a hadron in the target fragmentation region is observed in association with another hadron in the current fragmentation region. The beam leptons are longitudinally polarized while the target nucleons are unpolarized. This asymmetry is a leading-twist effect generated by the correlation between the transverse momentum of quarks and the transverse momentum of the hadron emitted by the target. Experimental signatures of this effect are discussed.
A first measurement of the longitudinal beam spin asymmetry ALU in the semi-inclusive electroproduction of pairs of charged pions is reported. ALU is a higher-twist observable and offers the cleanest access to the nucleon twist-3 parton distribution function e(x). Data have been collected in the Hall-B at Jefferson Lab by impinging a 5.498 GeV electron beam on a liquid-hydrogen target, and reconstructing the scattered electron and the pion pair with the CLAS detector. One-dimensional projections of the sin(phiR) moments of ALU are extracted for the kinematic variables of interest in the valence quark region. The understanding of di-hadron production is essential for the interpretation of observables in single hadron production in semi-inclusive DIS, and pioneering measurements of single spin asymmetries in di-hadron production open a new avenue in studies of QCD dynamics.
We study the inclusive production of two hadrons in deep inelastic processes, l N ---> l h_1 h_2 X, with h_1 in the current fragmentation region (CFR) and h_2 in the target fragmentation region (TFR). Assuming a factorized scheme, the recently introduced polarized and transverse momentum dependent fracture functions couple to the transverse momentum dependent fragmentation functions. This allows the full exploration of the fracture functions for transversely polarized quarks. Some particular cases are considered.
A consistent phenomenological approach to the computation of transverse single spin asymmetries in inclusive hadron production is presented, based on the assumed generalization of the QCD factorization theorem to the case in which quark intrinsic motion is taken into account. New k_T and spin dependent quark distribution and fragmentation functions are considered: some of them are fixed by fitting data on p(transv. polarized) + p -> pion + X and predictions are given for single spin asymmetries in l + p(transv. polarized) -> pion + X and gamma^* + p(transv. polarized) -> pion + X processes.
We study inclusive charged-hadron production in collisions of quasireal photons at NLO in perturbative QCD, using fragmentation functions recently extracted from PEP and LEP1 data. We superimpose the direct (DD), single-resolved (DR), and double-resolved (RR) gamma-gamma channels. First, we confront existing data taken by TASSO at PETRA and by MARK II at PEP with our NLO calculations. We also make comparisons with the neutral-kaon to charged-hadron ratio measured by MARK II. Then, we present NLO predictions for LEP2, a next-generation e+e- linear collider (NLC) in the TESLA design, and a Compton collider obtained by converting a NLC. We analyze transverse-momentum and rapidity spectra with regard to the scale dependence, the interplay of the DD, DR, and RR components, the sensitivity to the gluon density in the resolved photon, and the influence of gluon fragmentation. It turns out that the inclusive measurement of small-p_T hadrons at a Compton collider would greatly constrain the gluon density of the photon and the gluon fragmentation function.
We review recent progress on the calculations on the inclusive forward hadron production within the saturation formalism. After introducing the concept of perturbative parton saturation and nonlinear evolution we discuss the formalism for the forward hadron production at high energy in the leading and next-to-leading order. Numerical results are presented and compared with the experimental data on forward hadron production in $dA$ and $pA$. We discuss the problem of the negativity of the NLO cross section at high transverse momenta, study its origin in detail and present possible improvements which include the corrected kinematics and the suitable choice of the rapidity cutoff.