Cross section and transverse single-spin asymmetry of muons from open heavy-flavor decays in polarized $p+p$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}=200\text{ }\text{ }\mathrm{GeV}$

Cross section and transverse single-spin asymmetry of muons from open heavy-flavor decays in polarized $p + p$ collisions at $\sqrt{s} = 200 GeV$

C. Aidala et al. (PHENIX Collaboration)

Phys. Rev. D 95, 112001 – Published 12 June 2017

Abstract

The cross section and transverse single-spin asymmetries of $μ^{-}$ and $μ^{+}$ from open heavy-flavor decays in polarized $p + p$ collisions at $\sqrt{s} = 200 GeV$ 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 $\sqrt{s} = 200 GeV$ , these measurements offer a unique opportunity to obtain information on the trigluon correlation functions. The measurements are performed at forward and backward rapidity ( $1.4 < | y | < 2.0$ ) over the transverse momentum range of $1.25 < p_{T} < 7 GeV / c$ for the cross section and $1.25 < p_{T} < 5 GeV / c$ 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.