Transversity: theory and phenomenology

TL;DR

This paper reviews the theoretical properties, experimental access methods, recent phenomenological extractions, and future perspectives of transversity, a fundamental but less understood part of nucleon structure related to transverse polarization.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of transversity, including its theoretical background, experimental techniques, and recent phenomenological results, highlighting current challenges and future directions.

Findings

Recent phenomenological extractions of transversity distributions

Discussion of methods to access transversity experimentally

Analysis of limitations and prospects in transversity research

Abstract

The distribution of transversely polarized quarks inside a transversely polarized nucleon, known as transversity, encodes a basic piece of information on the nucleon structure, sharing the same status with the more familiar unpolarized and helicity distributions. I will review its properties and discuss different ways to access it, with highlights and limitations. Recent phenomenological extractions and perspectives are also presented.