Recent measurements from the HERMES and SMC collaborations show a remarkably large azimuthal single-spin asymmetries AUL and AUT of the proton in semi-inclusive pion leptoproduction γ*(q) p → π X. We show that final-state interactions from gluon exchange between the outgoing quark and the target spectator system leads to single-spin asymmetries in deep inelastic lepton-proton scattering at leading twist in perturbative QCD; i.e., the rescattering corrections are not power-law suppressed at large photon virtuality q2 at fixed xbj. The existence of such single-spin asymmetries requires a phase difference between two amplitudes coupling the proton target with [Formula: see text] to the same final-state, the same amplitudes which are necessary to produce a nonzero proton anomalous magnetic moment. We show that the exchange of gauge particles between the outgoing quark and the proton spectators produces a Coulomb-like complex phase which depends on the angular momentum Lz of the proton's constituents and thus is distinct for different proton spin amplitudes. The single-spin asymmetry which arises from such final-state interactions does not factorize into a product of structure function and fragmentation function, and it is not related to the transversity distribution δq(x,Q) which correlates transversely polarized quarks with the spin of the transversely polarized target nucleon.
Spin asymmetry in γe ↑→e+2 jets: A laboratory for final state interactions