The Sivers Asymmetry of Vector Meson Production in Semi-Inclusive Deep Inelastic Scattering

Abstract The transverse single-spin asymmetry for ρ 0 production in semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering was recently reported by the COMPASS Collaboration. Using the Sivers function extracted from pion and kaon productions, we perform a calculation of the Sivers asymmetry within the transverse momentum-dependent factorization. Our results are consistent with the COMPASS data, supporting the universality of the Sivers function in the semi-inclusive deep inelastic scattering process for different final-state hadrons within current experimental uncertainties. While different parametrizations of the Sivers function from global analyses allow describing the data equally well, we obtain very different predictions on the Sivers asymmetry of ρ and K * productions at electron-ion colliders, which therefore are expected to provide further constraints.