Measuring polarized gluon and quark distributions with meson photoproduction

We calculate polarization asymmetries in the photoproduction of high transverse momentum mesons, focusing on charged pions, considering the direct, fragmentation, and resolved photon processes. The results at very high meson momentum measure the polarized quark distributions and are sensitive to differences among the existing models. The results at moderate meson momentum are sensitive to the polarized gluon distribution and can provide a good way to measure it. Suitable data may come as a by-product of deep inelastic experiments to measure g₁ or from dedicated experiments.