Numerical Computation of Left-Right Asymmetries in Single-Inclusive Pion Production from Lepton-Nucleon Collisions

During collisions between leptons and transversely polarized nucleons at high energy, the left-right asymmetric formation of hadrons can be probed. These so-called transverse single-spin asymmetries A_N are the subject of our work. One issue for lower-energy fixed-target experiments is the possible need for next-to-leading order (NLO) corrections. Therefore, to create plausible predictions of these asymmetries, we aim to include NLO corrections to the spin-averaged cross section that enters the denominator of A_N. Comparison with data then may indicate the size of NLO corrections for the transversely polarized cross section in the numerator, which have not been fully worked out yet. We use recent phenomenological extractions of quark-gluon-quark (Sivers- and Collins-like) functions in our analysis to describe data from HERMES as well as present predictions for JLab12, COMPASS, and future Electron-Ion Collider experiments.