$W$-boson production in polarized proton-proton collisions at RHIC through next-to-next-to-leading order in perturbative QCD

TL;DR

This paper calculates W-boson production in polarized proton collisions at NNLO in QCD, improving the precision of polarized parton distribution functions and showing stable asymmetry predictions compared to RHIC data.

Contribution

It provides the first NNLO QCD calculation of W-boson production in polarized proton-proton collisions, enhancing the accuracy of polarized PDFs extraction.

Findings

NNLO corrections reduce scale dependence of cross sections

Longitudinal asymmetries are stable under higher-order corrections

Results agree well with RHIC measurements

Abstract

We perform a study of $W$-boson production in polarized proton-proton collisions through next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) in perturbative QCD. This calculation is required to extend the extraction of polarized parton distribution functions to NNLO accuracy. We present differential distributions at $\sqrt{s}=510$ GeV, relevant for comparison to measurements from the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). The NNLO QCD corrections significantly reduce the scale dependence of the cross section. We compare the longitudinal single-spin asymmetries as a function of lepton pseudorapidity to RHIC data. The asymmetries exhibit excellent stability under perturbative QCD corrections.