Gluon saturation effects on single spin asymmetries

Abstract

We consider forward pion production in p p collisions at RHIC energies,which probes the so-called Extended Geometric Scaling region. Upon inclusion of small-x effects via an anomalous dimension within the Color Glass Condensate formalism at leading order in alpha_s, a good description of the cross section as a function of the transverse momentum of the produced pion is obtained. The latter is essential for extractions of the Sivers effect from polarized p p collisions, since it is a sensitive probe of the slope of the cross section. Hence, the presented approach is well suited to extract the Sivers effect from single spin asymmetries in forward pion production at high energies.