Single spin asymmetries in inclusive high energy hadron-hadron collision processes

It has been realized for quite a long time that single-spin experiments, in which one of the colliding objects is transversely polarized, can be helpful in studying the properties of strong interaction in general and in testing Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD) in particular. Striking effects have been observed in the past few years which deviate drastically from the expectation of the perturbative QCD parton model. These effects have received much attention. New experiments of the similar type are underway and/or planned. Different theoretical attempts have been made to understand these effects. In this review, the special role played by singly polarized high-energy hadron-hadron collisions in High Energy Spin Physics is emphasized. Characteristics of the available data for inclusive hadron productions are briefly summarized. Different theoretical approaches for such processes are reviewed with special attention to a non-perturbative model which explicitly takes the orbital motion of the valence quarks and hadronic surface effects into account. The connection between such asymmetries and hyperon polarization in unpolarized reactions is discussed. An example of the possible application of such experimental results in other processes is given.Comment: 62 pages, 17 ps-figures (Review article to appear in Inter. J. Mod. Phys. A

Spin content of Lambda and its longitudinal polarization in e+e−e^+e^- annihilation at high energies

Longitudinal polarization of Lambda produced in $e^+e^-$ annihilation at LEP energies is calculated in a picture for the spin content of Lambda which is consistent with the polarized deep inelastic lepton-nucleon scattering data and SU(3) flavor symmetry for hyperon decay so that the spin of Lambda is not completely carried by its $s$-valence quark. A comparison with the recent ALEPH data and the results of earlier calculations based on the static quark model in which the spin of Lambda is completely determined by the $s$-quark is given. The result shows that further measurements of such polarization should provide useful information to the question of which picture is more suitable in describing the spin effects in the fragmentation processes.Comment: 12 pages, 2 figure

Evidence for Substantial Charge Symmetry Violation in Parton Distributions

In principle one can test the validity of charge symmetry for parton distributions by comparing structure functions measured in neutrino and charged lepton deep inelastic scattering. New experiments make such tests possible; they provide rather tight upper limits on parton charge symmetry violation [CSV] for intermediate Bjorken x, but appear to show evidence for CSV effects at small x. We examine two effects which might account for this experimental discrepancy: nuclear shadowing corrections for neutrinos, and strange quark contributions s(x) unequal to sbar(x). We show that neither of these two corrections removes the experimental discrepancy between the structure functions. We are therefore forced to consider the possibility of a surprisingly large CSV effect in the nucleon sea quark distributions.Comment: 10 pages, 3 postscript figure