Probing gluon helicity with heavy flavor at the EIC

TL;DR

This paper proposes a new method to measure the gluon helicity distribution inside the proton at the future Electron-Ion Collider using heavy flavor hadron asymmetries, enhancing understanding of proton spin structure.

Contribution

It introduces a novel measurement approach for gluon polarization via heavy flavor asymmetries at the EIC, including detailed impact studies and sensitivity analysis.

Findings

The proposed measurement can significantly constrain gluon helicity in the moderate x region.

Simulation results show promising sensitivity with the EIC detector setup.

The method complements existing measurements, improving the overall understanding of proton spin contributions.

Abstract

We propose a new measurement of the heavy flavor hadron double spin asymmetry in deep-inelastic scattering at a future Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) to constrain the polarized gluon distribution function inside the proton. Statistical projection on $D^0$ meson double spin asymmetry is calculated with an EIC central detector using an all-silicon tracker and vertexing subsystem. A first impact study was done by interpreting pseudo-data at next-to-leading order in QCD. The sensitivity of the experimental observable in constraining gluon helicity distribution in a wide range of parton momentum fraction $x$ has been investigated considering different beam energy configurations. This measurement complements the inclusive spin-dependent structure function measurement and provides an opportunity to constrain the gluon helicity distribution in the moderate $x$ region.