A first unbiased global determination of polarized PDFs and their uncertainties

Emanuele R. Nocera; Richard D. Ball; Stefano Forte; Giovanni Ridolfi; Juan Rojo

Paper

A first unbiased global determination of polarized PDFs and their uncertainties

Abstract

We present a first global determination of spin-dependent parton distribution functions (PDFs) and their uncertainties using the NNPDF methodology: NNPDFpol1.1. Longitudinally polarized deep-inelastic scattering data, already used for the previous NNPDFpol1.0 PDF set, are supplemented with the most recent polarized hadron collider data for inclusive jet and

boson production from the STAR and PHENIX experiments at RHIC, and with open-charm production data from the COMPASS experiment, thereby allowing for a separate determination of the polarized quark and anti-quark PDFs, and an improved determination of the medium- and large-

polarized gluon PDF. We study the phenomenological implications of the NNPDFpol1.1 set, and we provide predictions for the longitudinal double-spin asymmetry for semi-inclusive pion production at RHIC.