We show that linearly polarized gluons inside unpolarized hadrons can be directly probed in jet or heavy quark pair production in electron-hadron collisions. We discuss the simplest cos2ϕ asymmetries and estimate their maximal value, concluding that measurements of the unknown linearly polarized gluon distribution in the proton should be feasible in future Electron-Ion Collider or Large Hadron electron Collider experiments. Analogous asymmetries in hadron-hadron collisions suffer from factorization breaking contributions and would allow us to quantify the importance of initial- and final-state interactions.
© 2011 American Physical Society