Highlights from RHIC Spin Physics Program

Abstract

The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory delivers the world's highest energy polarized proton-proton collisions at a center of mass energy up to 500 GeV and provides a unique opportunity to study the quark and gluon spin structure of the proton and QCD dynamics at high energy scale. RHIC has produced many exiting physics results in recent years. The latest data from RHIC significantly constrain the gluon spin contribution to the proton spin, and the parity violating single spin asymmetry are observed for the first time in W production by both the PHENIX and STAR collaborations. In this report, I present the latest results from the PHENIX and STAR experiments, followed by a brief discussion of the future prospects of transverse physics, particularly on the importance of the unique measurements of Drell-Yan single spin asymmetry.Comment: 4 pages, MENU2010 proceeding