Transverse spin asymmetries for W-production in proton-proton collisions

Understand

We study parity-even and parity-odd polarization observables for the process $p \, p \to l^{\pm} \, X$, where the lepton comes from the decay of a $W$-boson.

• By using the collinear twist-3 factorization approach, we consider the case when one proton is transversely polarized, while the other is either unpolarized or longitudinally polarized.
• These observables give access to two particular quark-gluon-quark correlation functions, which have a direct relation to transverse momentum dependent parton distributions.
• We present numerical estimates for RHIC kinematics.