Sivers asymmetry extracted in SIDIS at the hard scales of the Drell–Yan process at COMPASS

Abstract Eight proton transverse-spin-dependent azimuthal asymmetries are extracted in four regions of the photon virtuality Q 2 from the COMPASS 2010 semi-inclusive hadron measurements in deep inelastic muon–nucleon scattering. These Q 2 regions correspond to the four regions of the di-muon mass Q 2 used in the ongoing analyses of the COMPASS Drell–Yan measurements, which allows for a future direct comparison of the nucleon transverse-momentum-dependent parton distribution functions extracted from these two alternative measurements. In addition, for the azimuthal asymmetries induced by the Sivers transverse-momentum-dependent parton distribution function various two-dimensional kinematic dependences are presented. The integrated Sivers asymmetries are found to be positive with an accuracy that appears to be sufficient to test the sign change of the Sivers function predicted by Quantum Chromodynamics.