Transverse Spin Results From PHENIX

Abstract

The PHENIX experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider explores the spin structure of the proton in polarized p+p collisions at center-of-mass energies up to 500 GeV. Tremendous experimental and theoretical progress has been made toward understanding the physics involved with transversely polarized beams or targets in recent years. Not only nucleon structure and parton distribution functions but also QCD dynamics have been studied in various physics processes in high-energy polarized DIS and p+p collisions. In the 2006 and 2008 RHIC runs, the PHENIX experiment took a significant amount of transversely polarized p+p collision data at 200 GeV center-of-mass energy, with an integrated luminosity of 8 $pb^{-1}$ and beam polarizations up to 50%. Single spin asymmetries of different probes have been measured in mid- and forward-rapidities. In this report, we present the latest transverse spin results from the PHENIX experiment and discuss briefly the prospects of future transverse spin physics with the PHENIX detectors upgrades.