Eur. Phys. J. C (2013) 73: 2557
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-013-2557-9

Regular Article - Theoretical Physics

Beam spin asymmetries of charged and neutral pion production in semi-inclusive DIS

Department of Physics, Southeast University, Nanjing, 211189, China

^* e-mail: zhunlu@seu.edu.cn

Received: 8 June 2013
Revised: 23 July 2013
Published online: 7 September 2013

Abstract

We present a study on the beam single spin asymmetries of π ⁺, π ⁻ and π ⁰ production in semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering process, by considering Collins effect and the g ^⊥ D ₁ term simultaneously. We calculate the twist-3 distributions and for the valence quarks inside the proton in a spectator model. We consider two different options for the form of diquark propagator, as well as two different choices for the model parameters in the calculation. Using the model results, we estimate the beam spin asymmetries for the charged and neutral pions and compare the results with the measurement from the HERMES Collaboration. We also make predictions on the asymmetries at CLAS with a 5.5 GeV beam using the same model results. It is found that different choices for the diquark propagator will not only lead to different expressions for the distribution functions, but also result in different sizes of the asymmetries. Our study also shows that, although the spectator model calculation can describe the asymmetries for certain pion production in some kinematic regions, it seems difficult to explain the asymmetries of pion production for all three pions in a consistent way from the current versions.