Charmed Hadron Production in Polarized pp Collisions†

To extract information about polarized gluons in the proton, production of charmed hadrons, in particular, Λc baryon in pp collisions was studied. We calculated the transverse momentum distribution and the pseudo-rapidity distribution of the spin correlation asymmetry ALL between the initial proton and the produced Λc . Those statistical sensitivities were also calculated under the condition of RHIC experiment. We found that the pseudo-rapidity distribution of ALL is promising for testing the model of polarized gluons in the proton and also the spin-dependent fragmentation model of a charm quark decaying into Λc baryon. †Talk presented by K. Ohkuma at the 15th International Spin Physics Symposium, BNL, Sep. 9-14, 2002