Next-to-leading order QCD corrections to single-inclusive hadron production in transversely polarized p-p and pbar-p collisions

Abstract

We present a calculation of the next-to-leading order QCD corrections to the partonic cross sections contributing to single-inclusive high-p_T hadron production in collisions of transversely polarized hadrons. We use a recently developed projection technique for treating the phase space integrals in the presence of the cos(2Phi) azimuthal-angular dependence associated with transverse polarization. Our phenomenological results show that the double-spin asymmetry A_TT^pi for neutral-pion production is expected to be very small for polarized pp scattering at RHIC and could be much larger for the proposed experiments with an asymmetric pbar-p collider at the GSI

7 pages, 5 figures