Erratum: Measurement of transverse single-spin asymmetries for J/psi production in polarized p+p collisions at sqrt(s)=200 GeV [Phys. Rev. D 82, 112008 (2010)]

TL;DR

This paper corrects previous measurements of transverse single-spin asymmetries in J/psi production, showing that the asymmetries are consistent with zero and do not support earlier claims of non-zero trigluon correlations.

Contribution

The paper provides corrected analysis and combined results for spin asymmetries in J/psi production, clarifying previous findings and implications for proton spin structure.

Findings

Corrected asymmetry results are consistent with zero.

Previous indications of non-zero asymmetries are invalidated.

No evidence for non-zero trigluon correlation functions.

Abstract

We previously reported [Phys. Rev. D 82, 112008 (2010)] measurements of transverse single-spin asymmetries, A_N, in J/psi production from transversely polarized p+p collisions at sqrt(s)=200 GeV with data taken by the PHENIX experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider in 2006 and 2008. Subsequently, we have found errors in the analysis procedures for the 2008 data, which resulted in an erroneous value for the extracted A_N. The errors affected the sorting of events into the correct left/right and forward/backward bins. This produced an incorrect value for the 2008 result, but the 2006 result is unaffected. We have conducted two independent reanalyses with these errors corrected, and we present here the corrected values for the 2008 data and the combined results for 2006 and 2008. The new combined spin asymmetry in the forward region is A_N = -0.026+/-0.026(stat)+/-0.003(sys). Since this asymmetry is consistent with zero, we no longer claim that our results suggest a possible non-zero trigluon correlation function in transversely polarized protons.