Polarized vector meson production in semi-inclusive DIS

TL;DR

This paper systematically analyzes polarized vector meson production in semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering, incorporating electroweak effects and deriving structure functions related to polarization and parity violation.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive kinematic and parton model analysis including 81 structure functions, highlighting polarization and parity-violating effects at leading order in QCD.

Findings

81 structure functions expressed in terms of TMD PDFs and fragmentation functions

27 nonzero structure functions at leading order, 15 related to tensor polarization

13 structure functions generated by parity-violating effects

Abstract

We make a systematic calculation for polarized vector meson production in semi-inclusive lepton-nucleon deep inelastic scattering $e^-N\to e^-VX$. We consider the general case of neutral current electroweak interactions at high energies which give rise to parity-violating effects. We present a general kinematic analysis for the process and show that the cross sections are expressed by 81 structure functions. We further give a parton model calculation for the process and show the results for the structure functions in terms of the transverse momentum dependent parton distribution functions and fragmentation functions at the leading order and leading twist of perturbative quantum chromodynamics. The results show that there are 27 nonzero structure functions at this order, among which 15 are related to the tensor polarization of the vector meson. Thirteen structure functions are generated by parity-violating effects. We also present the result and a rough numerical estimate for the spin alignment of the vector meson.