Longitudinal parity-violating asymmetry in hadronic decays of weak bosons in polarized proton collisions

Abstract

We investigate the possible measurement of parity-violating spin asymmetries in jet pair production in proton-proton collisions at the Brookhaven Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC), with the goal to constrain longitudinally polarized quark and antiquark distribution functions. A measurable asymmetry could be observed in the vicinity of the massive weak W boson resonance, where the parity-violating signal appears above the parity-conserving background and is enhanced by interference of the strong and electroweak production amplitudes. We discuss the potential for such measurements, perhaps the first opportunity to measure a parity-violating asymmetry in proton-proton collisions at RHIC. Sensitivity of this measurement to the polarization of down-type antiquarks is demonstrated.

16 pages, 6 figures; accepted by Phys. Rev. D; extended discussion of the sensitivity of A_L to the down-type antiquark PDF and other minor modifications