ANALYZING POWERS IN INCLUSIVE PION PRODUCTION AT HIGH ENERGY AND THE NUCLEON SPIN STRUCTURE

Analyzing powers in inclusive pion production in high energy transversely polarized proton–proton collisions are studied theoretically in the framework of the quark recombination model. Calculations by assuming the SU(6) spin-flavor symmetry for the nucleon structure disagree with the experiments. We solve this difficulty by taking into account the realistic spin distribution functions of the nucleon, which differs from the SU(6) expectation at large x, with a perturbative QCD constraint on the ratio of the unpolarized valence distributions, u/d→5 as x→ 1. We also discuss the kaon spin asymmetry and find AN(K+)=-AN(K0) in the polarized proton–proton collisions at large x F .