Measurement of parity-violating spin asymmetries in W ± production at midrapidity in longitudinally polarized p +p collisions MEASUREMENT of PARITY-VIOLATING SPIN ... A. ADARE et al.

(PHENIX Collaboration)

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

35 Scopus citations

Abstract

We present midrapidity measurements from the PHENIX experiment of large parity-violating single-spin asymmetries of high transverse momentum electrons and positrons from W±/Z decays, produced in longitudinally polarized p+p collisions at center of mass energies of s=500 and 510 GeV. These asymmetries allow direct access to the antiquark polarized parton distribution functions due to the parity-violating nature of the W-boson coupling to quarks and antiquarks. The results presented are based on data collected in 2011, 2012, and 2013 with an integrated luminosity of 240 pb-1, which exceeds previous PHENIX published results by a factor of more than 27. These high Q2 data probe the parton structure of the proton at W mass scale and provide an important addition to our understanding of the antiquark parton helicity distribution functions at an intermediate Bjorken x value of roughly MW/s=0.16.

Original languageEnglish
Article number051103
JournalPhysical Review D
Volume93
Issue number5
DOIs
StatePublished - Mar 23 2016

Funding

We thank the staff of the Collider-Accelerator and Physics Departments at Brookhaven National Laboratory and the staff of the other PHENIX participating institutions for their vital contributions. We acknowledge support from the Office of Nuclear Physics in the Office of Science of the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, Abilene Christian University Research Council, Research Foundation of SUNY, and Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Vanderbilt University (U.S.), Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (Japan), Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Cientifico e Tecnolegico and Fundao de Amparo Pesquisa do Estado de Sa£o Paulo (Brazil), Natural Science Foundation of China (People's Republic of China), Croatian Science Foundation and Ministry of Science, Education, and Sports (Croatia), Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports (Czech Republic), Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Commissariatlnergie Atomique, and Institut National de Physique Nuclaire et de Physique des Particules (France), Bundesministerium fur Bildung und Forschung, Deutscher Akademischer Austausch Dienst, and Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung (Germany), National Science Fund, OTKA, Kroly Robert University College, and the Ch. Simonyi Fund (Hungary), Department of Atomic Energy and Department of Science and Technology (India), Israel Science Foundation (Israel), Basic Science Research Program through NRF of the Ministry of Education (Korea), Physics Department, Lahore University of Management Sciences (Pakistan), Ministry of Education and Science, Russian Academy of Sciences, Federal Agency of Atomic Energy (Russia), VR and Wallenberg Foundation (Sweden), the U.S. Civilian Research and Development Foundation for the Independent States of the Former Soviet Union, the Hungarian American Enterprise Scholarship Fund, and the US-Israel Binational Science Foundation.

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Measurement of parity-violating spin asymmetries in W ± production at midrapidity in longitudinally polarized p +p collisions MEASUREMENT of PARITY-VIOLATING SPIN ... A. ADARE et al.'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this