Cross section and transverse single-spin asymmetry of muons from open heavy-flavor decays in polarized collisions at =200 GeV

Aidala, C.*; Hasegawa, Shoichi   ; Imai, Kenichi; Nagamiya, Shoji; Sako, Hiroyuki   ; Sato, Susumu  ; Tanida, Kiyoshi   ; PHENIX Collaboration*; 431 of others*

The cross section and transverse single-spin asymmetries of and from open heavy-flavor decays in polarized collisions at = 200 GeV were measured by the PHENIX experiment during 2012 at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider. Because heavy-flavor production is dominated by gluon-gluon interactions at = 200 GeV, these measurements offer a unique opportunity to obtain information on the trigluon correlation functions. The measurements are performed at forward and backward rapidity () over the transverse momentum range of GeV/ for the cross section and GeV/ for the asymmetry measurements. The obtained cross section is compared to a fixed-order-plus-next-to-leading-log perturbative-quantum-chromodynamics calculation. The asymmetry results are consistent with zero within uncertainties, and a model calculation based on twist-3 three-gluon correlations agrees with the data.