Probing Polarized Parton Distributions with Meson Photoproduction

Abstract

Polarization asymmetries in photoproduction of high transverse momentum mesons are a flavor sensitive way to measure the polarized quark distributions. We calculate the expected asymmetries in several models, and find that the asymmetries are significant and also significantly different from model to model. Suitable data may come as a by-product of deep inelastic experiments to measure $g_1$ or from dedicated experiments.

Comments: RevTeX, 5 pages, 5 postscript figures; minor corrections made, references added