Probing the polarized gluon distribution with a polarized target and a polarized final lepton

Abstract

Abstract Lepton pair production at large transverse momentum in hadronic collisions is considered. Only one of the initial hadrons is polarized and the polarization of one of the leptons is detected, i.e. A B→ l − l + + X . General expressions of the squared amplitudes are presented. When A and B are protons, it is shown that in a proper range of the kinematic variables the process is a sensitive probe of the polarized gluon distribution.