Semi-inclusive production of spin-3/2 hadrons in deep inelastic scattering

TL;DR

This paper develops a comprehensive formalism for analyzing the production of spin-3/2 hadrons in semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering, revealing numerous structure functions and potential asymmetries relevant for understanding nucleon spin structure.

Contribution

It introduces a complete differential cross section formalism with 288 structure functions for spin-3/2 hadron production, including polarization effects and azimuthal modulations, and provides model estimates of spin transfer asymmetries.

Findings

Half of the structure functions have nonzero leading order contributions for unpolarized beams.

42 structure functions involve rank-3 tensor polarized fragmentation functions.

Sizable asymmetries in spin transfer are predicted for polarized hadrons.

Abstract

We investigate the production of spin-3/2 hadrons in semi-inclusive deep inelastic lepton-nucleon scatterings. The complete differential cross section is derived through the kinematic analysis and expressed in terms of 288 structure functions, corresponding to all polarization configurations and azimuthal modulations. For an unpolarized lepton beam, half of the 192 structure functions have nonzero leading order contributions in the parton model, among which 42 are from rank-3 tensor polarized fragmentation functions of the hadron. For a polarized lepton beam, one third of the 96 structure functions contribute at the leading order and 14 of them are from rank-3 tensor polarized fragmentation functions. In addition to the formalism, we perform a model estimation of the spin transfer to a $S_{hLLL}$ polarized hadron and sizable asymmetry is expected. Therefore, these newly defined observables for the production of a spin-3/2 hadron in a deep inelastic scattering process can be explored in future experiments to understand nucleon spin structures and spin-dependent fragmentation functions.