Structure functions in polarized proton-deuteron Drell-Yan processes

TL;DR

This paper explores the complex spin structure functions in polarized proton-deuteron Drell-Yan processes, revealing numerous functions including tensor polarized distributions, and discusses experimental prospects for their measurement.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive formalism for polarized pd Drell-Yan processes, identifying many structure functions and highlighting the potential to measure tensor polarized distributions.

Findings

108 structure functions in general case

22 structure functions in Q_T-integrated case

Potential to measure tensor polarized distributions

Abstract

Polarized proton-deuteron (pd) Drell-Yan processes are investigated for studying new spin structure of a spin-1 hadron. Our formalism indicates that there exist many structure functions: 108 in general and 22 in the \vec Q_T-integrated case. A naive parton model suggests that at least one of them should be related to the tensor polarized distributions, which have not been measured at all. There are some experimental possibilities at FNAL, HERA, and RHIC to study the polarized pd reactions.