Gluon polarization in the nucleon from quasi-real photoproduction of high-pT hadron pairs

We present a determination of the gluon polarization Δ G / G in the nucleon, based on the helicity asymmetry of quasi-real photoproduction events, Q 2 1 ( GeV / c ) 2 , with a pair of large transverse-momentum hadrons in the final state. The data were obtained by the COMPASS experiment at CERN using a 160 GeV polarized muon beam scattered on a polarized 6 LiD target. The helicity asymmetry for the selected events is 〈 A ∥ / D 〉 = 0.002 ± 0.019 ( stat ) ± 0.003 ( syst ) . From this value, we obtain in a leading-order QCD analysis Δ G / G = 0.024 ± 0.089 ( stat ) ± 0.057 ( syst ) at x g = 0.095 and μ 2 ≃ 3 ( GeV / c ) 2 .