Next-to-Leading Order QCD Corrections to the Polarized Hadroproduction of Heavy Flavors

Abstract

We present the complete next-to-leading order QCD corrections to the polarized hadroproduction of heavy flavors which soon will be studied experimentally in polarized pp collisions at the BNL RHIC in order to constrain the polarized gluon density Delta g. It is demonstrated that the dependence on unphysical renormalization and factorization scales is strongly reduced beyond the leading order. The sensitivity of the heavy quark spin asymmetry to Delta g is studied, including the limited detector acceptance for experimentally observable leptons from heavy quark decays at the BNL RHIC. As a further application of our results, gluino pair production in polarized pp collisions is briefly discussed.