Aspects of four-jet production in polarized proton-proton collisions

Abstract

We examine the intrinsic spin-dependence of the dominant $gg\to gggg$ subprocess contribution to four-jet production in polarized proton-proton collisions using helicity amplitude techniques. We find that the partonic level, longitudinal spin-spin asymmetry, ${\hat{a}}_{LL}$, is intrinsically large in the kinematic regions probed in experiments detecting four isolated jets. Such events may provide another qualitative or semi-quantitative test of the spin-structure of QCD in planned polarized $pp$ collisions at RHIC.

Comments: 9 pages, LaTeX, 2 uuencoded postscript files attached