Produced partons have a large local relative orbital angular momentum along the direction opposite to the reaction plane in the early stage of noncentral heavy-ion collisions. Parton scattering is shown to polarize quarks along the same direction due to spin-orbital coupling. Such global quark polarization will lead to many observable consequences, such as left-right asymmetry of hadron spectra and global transverse polarization of thermal photons, dileptons, and hadrons. Hadrons from the decay of polarized resonances will have an azimuthal asymmetry similar to the elliptic flow. Global hyperon polarization is studied within different hadronization scenarios and can be easily tested.

• Received 25 October 2004

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.94.102301