The Collins asymmetry in electroproduction of Kaon at the electron ion colliders within TMD factorization

Abstract

Abstract We apply the transverse momentum dependent factorization formalism to investigate the transverse single spin dependent Collins asymmetry with a $$\sin (\phi _h+\phi _s)$$ sin(ϕh+ϕs) modulation in the semi-inclusive production of Kaon meson in deep inelastic scattering process. The asymmetry is contributed by the convolutions of the transversity distribution function $$h_1(x)$$ h1(x) of the target proton and the Collins function of the Kaon in the final state. We adopt the available parametrization of $$h_1(x)$$ h1(x) as well as the recent extracted result for the Kaon Collins function. To perform the transverse momentum dependent evolution, the parametrization of the nonperturbative Sudakov form factor of the proton and final state Kaon are utilized. We numerically predict the Collins asymmetry for charged Kaon production at the electron ion colliders within the accuracy of next-to-leading-logarithmic order. It is found that the asymmetry is sizable and could be measured. We emphasize the importance of planned electron ion colliders in the aspect of constraining sea quark distribution functions as well as accessing the information of the nucleon spin structure and the hadronization mechanism.