Structure functions in the polarized Drell-Yan processes with spin-1/2 and spin-1 hadrons. I. General formalism

Abstract

We discuss general formalism for the structure functions which can be investigated in the polarized Drell-Yan processes with spin-1/2 and spin-1 hadrons. To be specific, the formalism can be applied to the proton-deuteron Drell-Yan processes. Because of the spin-1 nature, there are new structure functions which cannot be studied in the proton-proton reactions. Imposing Hermiticity, parity conservation, and time-reversal invariance, we find that 108 structure functions exist in the Drell-Yan processes. However, the number reduces to 22 after integrating the cross section over the virtual-photon transverse momentum Q_T or after taking the limit Q_T->0. There are 11 new structure functions in addition to the 11 ones in the Drell-Yan processes of spin-1/2 hadrons. The additional structure functions are associated with the tensor structure of the spin-1 hadron, and they could be measured by quadrupole spin asymmetries. For example, the structure functions exist for "intermediate" polarization although their contributions vanish in the longitudinal and transverse polarization reactions. We show a number of spin asymmetries for extracting the polarized structure functions. The proton-deuteron reaction may be realized in the RHIC-Spin project and other future ones, and it could be a new direction of next generation high-energy spin physics.