Spin transfer in high energy fragmentation processes

Abstract

We point out that measuring longitudinal polarizations of different hyperons produced in lepton induced reactions are ideal to study the spin transfer of the fragtmenting quark to produced hadron in high energy hadronization processes. We briefly summarize the method used in calculating the hyperon polarizations in these processes, then present some of the results for e+e- and e-p or νp reactions obtained using two different pictures for the spin structure of hyperon: that drawn from polarized deep inelastic lepton-nucleon scattering data or that using SU(6) symmetric wave functions. The results show in particular that measurements of such polarizations should provide useful information to the question of which picture is more suitable in describing the spin effects in the fragmentation processes.