We study the single-transverse spin asymmetry for open charm production in the semi-inclusive lepton-hadron deep inelastic scattering. We calculate the asymmetry in terms of the QCD collinear factorization approach for D mesons at high enough Ph⊥, and find that the asymmetry is proportional to the twist-three tri-gluon correlation function in the proton. With a simple model for the tri-gluon correlation function, we estimate the asymmetry for both COMPASS and eRHIC kinematics, and discuss the possibilities of extracting the tri-gluon correlation function in these experiments.
@article{arxiv.0806.1970,
title = {Single transverse-spin asymmetry for $D$-meson production in semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering},
author = {Zhong-Bo Kang and Jian-Wei Qiu},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0806.1970},
year = {2008}
}