Neutral Pion Measurements from PHENIX in Polarized Proton Collisions at RHIC

This report presents the preliminary result for the absolute neutral pion (π deg.) production cross section at √(s) = 200 GeV for |η| < 0.50 which was obtained from the proton-proton data collected by the PHENIX experiment in January, 2002 as a part of Run02 at Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). We compare this result to the prediction of a next-to-leading order perturbative QCD calculation and find good agreement. Since the beams were transversely polarized, these data will be used to measure the single-spin transverse asymmetry (AN). So, we also discuss the statistical precision for such a measurement. In future runs, the gluon polarization (ΔG/G) will be probed by measuring double-spin longitudinal asymmetries (ALL). We present an estimate for the statistical precision which is expected for the neutral pion measurement in the upcoming run and compare it to predictions from pQCD calculations using different polarized gluon densities