Tensor polarization of vector mesons from quark and gluon fragmentation

We considered the electro- and photoproduction of \rho and other vector mesons with moderately large transverse momentum in the scattering of unpolarized electrons on unpolarized nucleons and nuclei. For these processes we have analyzed how to extract the novel fragmentation functions \bar b_1^q(z), \bar b_1^G(z), describing tensor polarization, and the photon double spin-flip distribution \Delta^\gamma from the angular distribution of meson decay products.