The gluon Sivers distribution: status and future prospects

We review what is currently known about the gluon Sivers distribution and what are the opportunities to learn more about it. Because single transverse spin asymmetries in p ↑ p → π X provide only indirect information about the gluon Sivers function through the relation with the quark-gluon and tri-gluon Qiu-Sterman functions, current data from hadronic collisions at RHIC have not yet been translated into a solid constraint on the gluon Sivers function. SIDIS data, including the COMPASS deuteron data, allow for a gluon Sivers contribution of natural size expected from large N c arguments, which is O (1 / N c) times the nonsinglet quark Sivers contribution. Several very promising processes to measure the gluon Sivers effect directly have been suggested, which besides RHIC investigations, would strongly favor experiments at AFTER@LHC and a possible future Electron-Ion Collider. Due to the inherent process dependence of TMDs, the gluon Sivers TMD probed in the various processes are different linear combinations of two universal gluon Sivers functions that have different behavior under charge conjugation and that therefore satisfy different theoretical constraints. For this reason both hadronic and DIS type of collisions are essential in the study of the role of gluons in transversely polarized protons.