Study of the Nucleon Spin Structure by the Drell–Yan Process in the COMPASS-II Experiment

The Parton Distribution Functions (PDFs) and the spin structure of the nucleon are important topics studied by the COMPASS experiment. The Drell–Yan (DY) process will be used in the future COMPASS-II measurements to access the Transverse Momentum Dependent PDFs (TMD PDFs). Studying the angular distributions of dimuons from the DY reactions with a negative pion beam with 190 GeV/c momentum and a transversely polarised proton target, we will be able to extract the azimuthal spin asymmetries and to access the various TMD PDFs, such as Sivers and Boer–Mulders functions. The start of the COMPASS DY experiment is scheduled for 2014. Three beam tests have been already performed, one of them in 2009 using a prototype hadron absorber downstream of the target, to understand the background reduction factors and the spectrometer response, and also to verify our results from Monte Carlo simulations. COMPASS aims at performing the first DY experiment with a transversely polarised target.