Collins and Sivers transverse-spin asymmetries in inclusive muoproduction of ρ0mesons

The production of vector mesons in deep inelastic scattering is an interesting yet scarcely explored channel to study the transverse spin structure of the nucleon and the spin-dependence of fragmentation. The COMPASS collaboration has performed the first measurement of the Collins and Sivers asymmetries for inclusively produced rho(0) mesons. The analysis is based on the data set collected in deep inelastic scattering in 2010 using a 160 GeV/c mu(+) beam impinging on a transversely polarized NH3 target. The rho(0) mesons are selected from oppositely charged hadron pairs, and the asymmetries are extracted as a function of the Bjorken-xvariable, the transverse momentum of the pair and the fraction of the energy z carried by the pair. Indications for positive Collins and Sivers asymmetries are observed. (c) 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Funded by SCOAP(3).

Automated summary

The production of vector mesons in deep inelastic scattering is an interesting channel to study the transverse spin structure and spin-dependence of fragmentation of the nucleon. In this study, the Collins and Sivers asymmetries for inclusively produced rho(0) mesons were measured for the first time using data collected in 2010. Positive asymmetries were observed for both the Collins and Sivers effects.