SINGLE SPIN ASYMMETRIES IN INCLUSIVE DIS AND MULTI-PARTON CORRELATIONS IN THE NUCLEON

Transverse single spin asymmetries in inclusive deep-inelastic lepton-nucleon scattering can be generated through multi-photon exchange between the leptonic and the hadronic part of the process. Here we consider two-photon exchange, and mainly focus on the transverse target spin asymmetry. In particular, we investigate the case where two photons couple to different quarks. Such a contribution involves a quark-photon-quark correlator in the nucleon, which has a (model-dependent) relation to the Efremov-Teryaev-Qiu-Sterman quark-gluon-quark correlator TF. Using different parameterizations for TF we compute the transverse target spin asymmetry for both a proton and a neutron target, and compare the results to recent experimental data. Potential implications on our general understanding of single spin asymmetries in hard scattering processes are discussed as well.