Polarised Drell-Yan measurements at COMPASS-II

Abstract

The spin structure of the nucleon and its Parton Distribution Functions (PDFs) are important topics studied by the COMPASS experiment at CERN. So far, the transverse momentum dependent PDFs (TMD PDFs) of the proton and deuteron have been studied in Semi-Inclusive Deep Inelastic Scattering (SIDIS). The Drell-Yan (DY) process is a complementary way to access the TMD PDFs, using a transversely polarised target. Studying the angular distributions of dimuons from the DY events produced in the collisions of a π− beam with 190 GeV/c momentum off a transversely polarised proton target (NH3) we are able to extract the azimuthal spin asymmetries, which are generated by 4 out of the 8 TMD PDFs needed to describe the nucleon structure at leading order QCD. The expected sign change in Sivers and Boer-Mulders functions when accessed from DY and SIDIS will be checked [1]. The opportunity to study, in the same experiment, the TMD PDFs from both SIDIS and DY processes is unique at COMPASS. The COMPASS II Proposal [2] was approved by CERN including one year for polarised DY measurements; the beginning of the DY data taking is scheduled for 2014. The feasibility of the measurement was proven by several beam tests performed so far.