We report the transverse single-spin asymmetries of J/ψ production at forward and backward rapidity, 1.2<|y|<2.2, as a function of J/ψ transverse momentum (pT) and Feynman-x (xF). The data analyzed were recorded by the PHENIX experiment at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider in 2015 from p+p, p+Al, and p+Au collisions with transversely polarized proton beams at √sNN=200 GeV. At this collision energy, single-spin asymmetries for heavy-flavor particle production of p+p collisions provide access to the spin-dependent gluon distribution and higher-twist correlation functions inside the nucleon, such as the gluon Qiu-Sterman and trigluon correlation functions. Proton+nucleus collisions offer an excellent opportunity to study nuclear effects on the correlation functions. The data indicate a positive asymmetry at the two-standard-deviation level in the p+p data for 2 GeV/c
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This article is published as Aidala, C., Y. Akiba, M. Alfred, V. Andrieux, N. Apadula, H. Asano, B. Azmoun et al. "Single-spin asymmetry of J/ψ production in p+ p, p+ Al, and p+ Au collisions with transversely polarized proton beams at s N N= 200 GeV." Physical Review D 98, no. 1 (2018): 012006. DOI: 10.1103/PhysRevD.98.012006. Posted with permission.