Absorptive corrections, which are known to suppress proton-neutron transitions with a large fractional momentum z -> 1 in pp collisions, become dramatically strong on a nuclear target, and they push the partial cross sections of leading neutron production to the very periphery of the nucleus. The mechanism of the pion and axial vector a1-meson interference, which successfully explains the observed single-spin asymmetry in a polarized pp -> nX, is extended to the collisions of polarized protons with nuclei. When corrected for nuclear effects, it explains the observed single-spin azimuthal asymmetry of neutrons that is produced in inelastic events, which is where the nucleus violently breaks up. This single-spin asymmetry is found to be negative and nearly A-independent.
@article{arxiv.2311.07084,
title = {Single-Spin Asymmetry of Neutrons in Polarized pA Collisions},
author = {B. Z. Kopeliovich and I. K. Potashnikova and Ivan Schmidt},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2311.07084},
year = {2023}
}
Comments
13 pages, 7 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1702.07708