Analysis of Weak-Interaction Effects in High Energy Hadron-Hadron Collisions

Abstract

Parity-violating (pv) effects in inclusive hadron and jet productions in high energy hadron-hadron collisions are analyzed. Such effects arise from the interference between strong and weak amplitudes. This interference gives rise to a nonzero value of the pv parameters $A_L$ and $P_L$, where $A_L$ measures the difference in the inclusive cross sections of, for example, $p+p\ri {\rm jet}+X$ ($X$=anything), with one of incident proton beams in a state of $\pm$ helicity, and $P_L$ denotes the longitudinal polarization of a high-energy baryon (e.g., $\Lambda$) produced in $p+p\ri\Lambda+X$ with the initial proton beams unpolarized. In the present paper, the single helicity asymmetry $A_L$ in one-jet, two-jet and two-jet plus photon productions as well as in the Drell-Yan process $p+p\ri\ell^+\ell^-+{\rm jet}+X$ is probed, and the longitudinal polarization $P_L$ of the $\Lambda$ produced in unpolarized $pp$ collisions is studied. We conclude that the pv effects in high energy proton-proton collisions are in general only sensitive to the spin dependent valence quark distributions.