Measurements of double-helicity asymmetries in inclusive J /ψ production in longitudinally polarized p+p collisions at s =510 GeV

Abstract

We report the double-helicity asymmetry, ALLJ/ψ, in inclusive J/ψ production at forward rapidity as a function of transverse momentum pT and rapidity |y|. The data analyzed were taken during s=510 GeV longitudinally polarized p+p collisions at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider in the 2013 run using the PHENIX detector. At this collision energy, J/ψ particles are predominantly produced through gluon-gluon scatterings, thus ALLJ/ψ is sensitive to the gluon polarization inside the proton. We measured ALLJ/ψ by detecting the decay daughter muon pairs μ+μ- within the PHENIX muon spectrometers in the rapidity range 1.2 <2.2. In this kinematic range, we measured the ALLJ/ψ to be 0.012±0.010 (stat) ±0.003 (syst). The ALLJ/ψ can be expressed to be proportional to the product of the gluon polarization distributions at two distinct ranges of Bjorken x: one at moderate range x≈5×10-2 where recent data of jet and π0 double helicity spin asymmetries have shown evidence for significant gluon polarization, and the other one covering the poorly known small-x region x≈2×10-3. Thus our new results could be used to further constrain the gluon polarization for x<5×10-2.