Spin alignment of vector mesons in high energy pp collisions

The spin alignment of vector mesons produced in high energy reactions is determined by the spin-dependent fragmentation function D1LL(z,μf) that is shown to be independent of the polarization of the fragmenting quark. In this paper, we extract the spin-dependent fragmentation function D1LL(z,μf) from data on the spin alignment of K*0 in e+e− annihilation at the large electron-position collider (LEP) in two different scenarios and apply them to make predictions in pp collisions. We make detailed analysis of contributions from different subprocesses and show that the spin alignment should be quite significant also in high energy pp collisions.