Qcd Selection Rules in Polarized Hadron Collisions∗

Plans are underway to measure spin asymmetries at large momentum transfer in hadron hadron collisions at RHIC and elsewhere. Proposals have focused on measuring quark transversity and quark and gluon helicity distributions in the nucleon. These experiments will also provide a strong and simple test of perturbative QCD, namely that ATT/ALL ≪ 1 in pp → 2 jets +X and several related processes, whereas ATT/ALL ∼ 1 in Drell-Yan production of muon pairs. The prediction tests the helicity, twist and chirality selection rules of perturbative QCD that form the foundation for the analysis of spin dependent hard processes. We estimate the ratio ATT/ALL numerically for polarized protons at RHIC. ∗This work is supported in part by funds provided by the U.S. Department of Energy (D.O.E.) under cooperative agreement #DF-FC02-94ER40818 and #DE-FG02-92ER40702 and in part by funds provided by the National Science Foundation under grant # PHY 92-18167.