Abstract
The STAR collaboration reports a measurement of the transverse single-spin asymmetries, AN, for neutral pions produced in polarized proton collisions with protons (pp), with aluminum nuclei (pAl) and with gold nuclei (pAu) at a nucleon-nucleon center-of-mass energy of 200 GeV. Neutral pions are observed in the forward direction relative to the transversely polarized proton beam, in the pseudorapidity region 2.7<η<3.8. Results are presented for π0s observed in the STAR forward meson spectrometer electromagnetic calorimeter in narrow Feynman x (xF) and transverse momentum (pT) bins, spanning the range 0.17<xF<0.81 and 1.7<pT<6.0 GeV/c. For fixed xF<0.47, the asymmetries are found to rise with increasing transverse momentum. For larger xF, the asymmetry flattens or falls as pT increases. Parametrizing the ratio r(A)AN(pA)/AN(pp)=AP over the kinematic range, the ratio r(A) is found to depend only weakly on A, with P = -0.027±0.005. No significant difference in P is observed between the low-pT region, pT<2.5 GeV/c, where gluon saturation effects may play a role, and the high-pT region, pT>2.5 GeV/c. It is further observed that the value of AN is significantly larger for events with a large-pT isolated π0 than for events with a nonisolated π0 accompanied by additional jetlike fragments. The nuclear dependence r(A) is similar for isolated and nonisolated π0 events.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | e072005 |
| Journal | Physical Review D |
| Volume | 103 |
| Issue number | 7 |
| DOIs | |
| State | Published - Apr 16 2021 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:We thank the RHIC Operations Group and RCF at BNL, the NERSC Center at LBNL, and the Open Science Grid consortium for providing resources and support. This work was supported in part by the Office of Nuclear Physics within the U.S. DOE Office of Science, the U.S. National Science Foundation, the Ministry of Education and Science of the Russian Federation, National Natural Science Foundation of China, Chinese Academy of Science, the Ministry of Science and Technology of China and the Chinese Ministry of Education, the Higher Education Sprout Project by Ministry of Education at NCKU, the National Research Foundation of Korea, Czech Science Foundation and Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic, Hungarian National Research, Development and Innovation Office, New National Excellency Programme of the Hungarian Ministry of Human Capacities, Department of Atomic Energy and Department of Science and Technology of the Government of India, the National Science Centre of Poland, the Ministry of Science, Education and Sports of the Republic of Croatia, RosAtom of Russia and German Bundesministerium fur Bildung, Wissenschaft, Forschung and Technologie (BMBF), Helmholtz Association, Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (MEXT) and Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS).
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 American Physical Society.
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Nuclear and High Energy Physics