Lambda polarization from unpolarized quark fragmentation
M. Anselmino, D. Boer, U. D'Alesio, F. Murgia
Abstract
The longstanding problem of explaining the observed polarization of Lambda hyperons inclusively produced in the high energy collisions of unpolarized hadrons is tackled by considering spin and k_T dependent quark fragmentation functions. The data on Lambda's and Lambda-bar's produced in p-N processes are used to determine simple phenomenological expressions for these new "polarizing fragmentation functions", which describe the experiments remarkably well.