Speaker
Description
In the E1039/SpinQuest experiment at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, the Main Injector beam of 120 GeV protons will be incident upon a transversely polarized proton (NH$_3$) target, and we will observe $\mu^+\mu^-$ pairs from charmonium and Drell-Yan production. We expect that the $J/\psi$ and $\psi'$ will be produced by a mixture of $q\bar{q}$ and $gg$ interactions. Due to the high cross section of these channels and the very high luminosity of this experiment ($\approx 10^{36}$ cm$^{-2}$s$^{-1}$) we will be able to get enough statistics in a few weeks to report on the transverse single spin asymmetry (TSSA) in the process $p + p^{\uparrow} = J/\psi + X$. In order to get enough statistics within a short period of time, we will optimize the detector setup including the relative polarity of the spectrometer's two magnetic fields. Such asymmetries will shed light on the $J/\psi$ production mechanism, a long-standing question in QCD, while also exploring the transverse structure of the proton.