The large-x behavior of the transverse-momentum dependent quark distributions is analyzed in the factorization-inspired perturbative QCD framework, particularly for the naive time-reversal-odd quark Sivers function which is responsible for the single transverse-spin asymmetries in various semi-inclusive hard processes. By examining the dominant hard gluon exchange Feynman diagrams, and using the resulting power counting rule, we find that the Sivers function has power behavior (1-x){sup 4} at x {yields} 1, which is one power of (1-x) suppressed relative to the unpolarized quark distribution. These power-counting results provide important guidelines for the parameterization of quark distributions and quark-gluon correlations.

The Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) is designed to provide collisions of high energy polarized protons for the quest of understanding the proton spin structure. Polarized proton collisions at a beam energy of 100 GeV have been achieved in RHIC since 2001. Recently, polarized proton beam was accelerated to 250 GeV in RHIC for the first time. Unlike accelerating unpolarized protons, the challenge for achieving high energy polarized protons is to fight the various mechanisms in an accelerator that can lead to partial or total polarization loss due to the interaction of the spin vector with the magnetic fields. We report on the progress of the RHIC polarized proton program. We also present the strategies of how to preserve the polarization through the entire acceleration chain, i.e. a 200 MeV linear accelerator, the Booster, the AGS and RHIC.