Longitudinal Contribution to the Alignment Polarization of Quarks Produced in e+ e- Annihilation: An O(alpha_s) Effect

We calculate the longitudinal contribution to the alignment polarization $\Pl$ of quarks produced in $e^+e^-$ annihilation. In the Standard Model, the longitudinal alignment polarization vanishes at the Born term level and thus receives its first non-zero contribution from the $O(\as)$ tree graph process. We provide analytical and numerical results for the longitudinal alignment polarization of massless and massive quarks, in particular for the recently discovered top quark.