43 research outputs found

    First glances at the transversity parton distribution through dihadron fragmentation functions

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    We present first observations of the transversity parton distribution based on an analysis of pion-pair production in deep inelastic scattering off transversely polarized targets. The extraction of transversity relies on the knowledge of dihadron fragmentation functions, which we take from electron-positron annihilation measurements. This is the first attempt to determine the transversity distribution in the framework of collinear factorization.Comment: Minor changes in text and reference

    First extraction of Interference Fragmentation Functions from e+e- data

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    We report on the first extraction of interference fragmentation functions from the semi-inclusive production of two hadron pairs in back-to-back jets in e+e- annihilation. A nonzero asymmetry in the correlation of azimuthal orientations of opposite \pi+\pi- pairs is related to the transverse polarization of fragmenting quarks through a significant polarized dihadron fragmentation function. Extraction of the latter requires the knowledge of its unpolarized counterpart, the probability density for a quark to fragment in a \pi+\pi- pair. Since data for the unpolarized cross section are missing, we extract the unpolarized dihadron fragmentation function from a Monte Carlo simulation of the cross section.Comment: 17 pages, 7 (multiple) figures, 15 tables, RevTeX format; refined version of the fit, conclusions unchanged; added referenc

    Pion nucleus Drell-Yan process and parton transverse momentum in the pion

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    We present a thorough analysis of unpolarized Drell-Yan (DY) pair production in pion-nucleus scattering. On the nucleus side, we use nuclear parton distributions along with parametrisations of the nucleon partonic transverse distribution available in the literature. Partonic longitudinal and transverse distributions of the pion are those obtained in a recent calculation in a Nambu-Jona Lasinio (NJL) framework, with Pauli-Villars regularization. The scale of the NJL model is fixed by a comparison between NLO predictions based on NJL evolved pion distributions and rapidity differential DY cross sections data. The resulting distributions are then used to describe, up to next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy, the transverse momentum spectrum of dilepton pairs up to a transverse momentum of 2 GeV. With no additional parameters, fair agreement is found with available pion-nucleus data, confirming the virtues of the NJL description of pion parton structure. We find sizable evolution effects on the shape of the distributions and on the generated average transverse momentum of the dilepton pair. We discuss the possibility of extracting details on pion unpolarized transverse momentum dependent parton distribution from pion nucleus DY data. In this respect, the region of low invariant mass of the lepton pair appears to be favored to discriminate between different descriptions of the non-perturbative pion transverse structure.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figure
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