Kane-Pumplin-Repko Factorization: its application to precision measurements of transverse spin asymmetries and to the study of TMD evolution

TL;DR

This paper discusses the Kane-Pumplin-Repko factorization and its application to high-precision measurements of transverse spin asymmetries, aiding the understanding of nonperturbative QCD and TMD evolution.

Contribution

It introduces the KPR factorization concept and demonstrates its use in analyzing transverse spin asymmetries for calibrating TMDs and studying TMD evolution.

Findings

KPR factorization provides a framework for analyzing spin asymmetries.

Measurements can calibrate TMD phenomenology.

Application to TMD evolution enhances understanding of hadronic structure.

Abstract

This article presents a summary of overlapping presentations by the author to the QCD Evolution 2013 Workshop and to the Opportunities for Polarized Physics at Fermilab Workshop. It contains an introduction to the concept of Kane-Pumplin-Repko (KPR) factorization and descibes how this concept can be used in the analysis of high-precision measurements of parity-conserving transverse single-spin asymmetries. The discussion demonstrates that such measurements can not only probe directly for specific mechanisms that enhance our fundamental understanding of nonperturbative QCD but, because transverse spin asymmetries are unambiguously perameterized by a spin-directed momentum shift, such measurements can also be used to calibrate other phenomenological applications of transverse momentum dependent distributions (TMD's) and of TMD evolution. The calibration supplied by these measurements can thus enable the use of TMD factorization for the exploration of a broad range of other aspects of hadronic structure.