Gluon Contributions to Parity-Violating Asymmetries in Polarized Proton-Proton Scattering

Abstract

We report on a calculation of one-loop weak corrections to polarized quark-gluon scattering and the corresponding crossed channels. Such contributions are suppressed formally by one power of alpha_s relative to W- or Z-mediated quark-quark scattering, but would enable the spin asymmetry of the gluon distribution to contribute to parity-violating asymmetries that will soon be investigated in polarized proton-proton scattering experiments at RHIC. In certain kinematic regions, gluon contributions to parity-violating asymmetries can be as large as 10% of the tree-level W- and Z-exchanges in quark-quark scattering, but usually only where the parity-violating asymmetries are already small.

LATEX 12 pages, 6 figures