Double Helicity Asymmetry and Cross Section for eta Production in Polarized pp Collisions at PHENIX

TL;DR

This paper reports measurements of double helicity asymmetries and cross sections for eta production in polarized proton-proton collisions, providing data crucial for understanding gluon polarization and fragmentation functions.

Contribution

It presents the first measurements of eta production asymmetries and cross sections in polarized pp collisions, aiding the extraction of gluon polarization and fragmentation functions.

Findings

Double helicity asymmetries measured for eta production.

Cross section data obtained for eta production.

Results support constraints on gluon polarization.

Abstract

Measurements of double helicity asymmetries for inclusive hadron production in polarized proton-proton collisions are sensitive to spin-dependent parton distribution functions, in particular to the gluon distribution, Delta g. This study presents the double helicity asymmetry and the cross section for eta production. The cross section measurement yields valuable data for the extraction of the fragmentation functions, which are unknown at present but are a prerequisite for the extraction of the spin-dependent parton distribution functions.