Justin Stevens
Indiana University
The production of W bosons in p+p collisions at RHIC provides an
excellent tool to probe the flavor-dependence of the sea quark
distributions of the proton. In particular, parity-violating single-spin
asymmetries for W bosons produced in longitudinally polarized p+p
collisions give access to the flavor-separated light quark and antiquark
polarization distributions. Precise measurements of the flavor-separated
antiquark polarizations are expected to place additional constraints on
models and further our understanding of the mechanism responsible for
generating the light quark sea of the proton, complementary to
measurements of the $\bar{d}/\bar{u}$ flavor asymmetry in fixed target
Drell-Yan. The W bosons produced in the polarized p+p collisions can be
detected through their electron decay channel where only the charged
lepton is observed. The large acceptance of the STAR Time Projection
Chamber and Electromagnetic Calorimeters is well suited to reconstruct
the decay electrons and separate the signal from the large QCD
background, yielding a clean W signal. Results for the W boson
production cross section and parity-violating single-spin asymmetry, as
well as future projections for the STAR W spin program, will be presented.