Sivers Asymmetries for Inclusive Pion and Kaon Production in Deep-Inelastic Scattering

We calculate the Sivers distribution functions induced by the final-state interaction due to one-gluon exchange in diquark models of nucleon structure, treating the cases of scalar and axial-vector diquarks with both dipole and Gaussian form factors. We use these distribution functions to calculate the Sivers single-spin asymmetries for inclusive pion and kaon production in deep-inelastic scattering. We compare our calculations with the results of HERMES and COMPASS, finding good agreement for pi+ production at HERMES, and qualitative agreement for pi0 and K+ production. Our predictions for pion and kaon production at COMPASS could be probed with increased statistics. The successful comparison of our calculations with the HERMES data constitutes prima facie evidence that the quarks in the nucleon have some orbital angular momentum in the infinite-momentum frame.