Spin Physics and Transverse Structure

Abstract

Spin is a welcome complication in the study of partonic structure that has led to new insights, even if theoretically and experimentally not all dust has settled, in particular on quark flavor dependence and gluon spin. At the same time it opened new questions on angular momentum and effects of transverse structure. In this talk the focus is on the role of the transverse momenta of partons. Like for collinear parton distribution functions (PDFs), we are also in the case of transverse momentum dependent (TMD) PDFs, talking about forward matrix elements. TMD PDFs (or in short TMDs) extend collinear PDFs with only spin-spin correlations to PDFs that include spin-momentum correlations, including also time-reversal-odd (T-odd) correlations, relevant for the description of single spin asymmetries. In this way TMDs open up new ways of studying the spin structure. Their operator structure within QCD, however, is more complex leading to various ways of breaking of universality.Comment: 8 pages, to appear in proceedings of DIS2015 (XXIII International Workshop on Deep-Inelastic Scattering and Related Subjects, 27 April - 1 May, 2015, Dallas, USA