Gluon Sivers function in a light-cone spectator model

Abstract

We calculate the gluon Sivers function of the proton in the valence-$x$ region using a light-cone spectator model with the presence of the gluon degree of freedom. We obtain the values of the parameters by fitting the model resulting gluon density distribution to the known parametrization. We find that our results agree with the recent phenomenological extraction of the gluon Sivers function after considering the evolution effect. We also estimate the mean transverse momentum of the gluon in a transversely polarized proton and find that it is within the range implied by the Burkardt sum rule.