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Paper

Single-spin asymmetry of $J/ψ$ production in $p$$+$$p$, $p$$+$Al, and $p$$+$Au collisions with transversely polarized proton beams at $\sqrt{s_{_{NN}}}=200$ GeV

Abstract

We report the transverse single-spin asymmetries of production at forward and backward rapidity, , as a function of transverse momentum () and Feynman- (). The data analyzed were recorded by the PHENIX experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider in 2015 from , Al, and Au collisions with transversely polarized proton beams at GeV. At this collision energy, single-spin asymmetries for heavy-flavor particle production of collisions provide access to the spin-dependent gluon distribution and higher-twist correlation functions inside the nucleon, such as the gluon Qiu-Sterman and trigluon correlation functions. Proton+nucleus collisions offer an excellent opportunity to study nuclear effects on the correlation functions. The data indicate negative asymmetries at the two-standard-deviation level in the Au data for GeV/ at both forward and backward rapidity, while in and Al collisions the asymmetries are consistent with zero within the range of experimental uncertainties.