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

Aidala, C.*; 長谷川 勝一; 今井 憲一; 永宮 正治; 佐甲 博之; 佐藤 進; 谷田 聖; PHENIX Collaboration*; 他431名*

Physical Review D, 95(11), p.112001_1 - 112001_15, 2017/06

AA2017-0235.pdf:0.72MB

https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.95.112001

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.