Longitudinal parity-violating asymmetry in hadronic decays of weak bosons in polarized proton collisions

TL;DR

This paper explores the potential to measure parity-violating spin asymmetries in jet pair production at RHIC to better understand polarized quark distributions, especially near the W boson resonance.

Contribution

It proposes a novel method to detect parity-violating asymmetries in proton-proton collisions, focusing on the W boson resonance region, which could provide new insights into polarized antiquark distributions.

Findings

Asymmetry could be measurable near the W boson resonance.

Measurement sensitivity to down-type antiquark polarization is demonstrated.

Potential first measurement of parity violation in proton-proton collisions at RHIC.

Abstract

We investigate the possible measurement of parity-violating spin asymmetries in jet pair production in proton-proton collisions at the Brookhaven Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), with the goal to constrain longitudinally polarized quark and antiquark distribution functions. A measurable asymmetry could be observed in the vicinity of the massive weak W boson resonance, where the parity-violating signal appears above the parity-conserving background and is enhanced by interference of the strong and electroweak production amplitudes. We discuss the potential for such measurements, perhaps the first opportunity to measure a parity-violating asymmetry in proton-proton collisions at RHIC. Sensitivity of this measurement to the polarization of down-type antiquarks is demonstrated.