Measuring azimuthal asymmetries in semi-inclusive deep-inelastic scattering off transversely polarized protons

The COMPASS experiment at the international research center CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) is dedicated to study the longitudinal and transverse spin structure of the nucleon. It is a fixed target experiment at the end of the M2 beam line of the SPS accelerator, which provides a 160 GeV/c longitudinally polarized muon beam. In the years 2002, 2003, 2004 and 2006 COMPASS took data scattering off polarized deuterons and in the year 2007 scattering off polarized protons. The analysis of the data taken in 2007 with transversely polarized protons is the topic of this thesis. In leading order and integrating over quark transverse momenta three parton distribution functions are needed for a complete description of the nucleon. Two of them, the quark number density and the helicity distribution are well known. However, the third one, the transversity distribution is up to now almost unknown. In this thesis single spin asymmetries in the cross-section of one hadron and two hadron production are analyzed, which give access to determine the transversity distribution. Including quark transverse momenta, more distribution functions are allowed. Of particular interest is the Sivers distribution, since it is connected to quark angular momentum, one of the missing pieces in the nucleon spin puzzle. The corresponding asymmetry in the cross-section of single hadron production is analyzed. New algorithms for the extraction of the asymmetries mentioned above are developed and extensively studied on simulated monte carlo data. Furthermore effects of instabilities of the detector acceptance during data taking are simulated and their effects on the extraction of the asymmetries are studied.