On the non-vanishing of the Collins mechanism for single spin asymmetries

Abstract

The Collins mechanism provides a non-perturbative explanation for the large single spin asymmetries found in hard semi-inclusive reactions involving a transversely polarized nucleon. However, there are seemingly convincing reasons to suspect that the mechanism vanishes, and indeed it does vanish in the naive parton model where a quark is regarded as an essentially 'free' particle. We give an intuitive analysis which highlights the difference between the naive picture and the realistic one, and shows how the Collins mechanism arises when the quark is described as an off-shell particle by a field in interaction. A typographical error is corrected in this version.