Polarization asymmetry zero in heavy quark photoproduction and leptoproduction

We demonstrate two novel features of the sea-quark contributions to the polarized structure functions and photoproduction cross sections, a zero sum rule and a zero crossing point of the polarization asymmetry, which can be traced directly to the dynamics of the perturbative tree-graph gluon-splitting contributions. In particular, we show that the Born contribution of massive quarks arising from photon-gluon fusion gives zero contribution to the logarithmic integral over the polarization asymmetry ∫dννΔσ(ν,Q2) for any photon virtuality. The vanishing of this integral in the Bjorken scaling limit then implies a zero gluon-splitting Born contribution to the Gourdin-Ellis-Jaffe sum rule for polarized structure functions from massive sea quarks. The vanishing of the polarization asymmetry at or near the canonical position predicted by perturbative QCD provides an important tool for verifying the dominance of the photon-gluon fusion contribution to charm photoproduction and for validating the effectiveness of this process as a measure of the gluon polarization ΔG(x,Q2) in the nucleon. The displacement of the asymmetry zero from its canonical position is sensitive to the virtuality of the gluon in the photon-gluon fusion subprocess, and it can provide a measure of intrinsic and higher-order sea quark contributions.