POLARIZED LAMBDA-BARYON PRODUCTION IN PP COLLISIONS

We study the production of longitudinally polarized Lambda baryons in single-spin p (p) over right arrow collisions at BNL RHIC and DESY HER A-(N) over right arrow as a means of determining the spin-dependent La mbda fragmentation functions. It is shown that a measurement of the ra pidity distribution of the h's would provide an excellent way of clear ly discriminating between various recently suggested sets of polarized Lambda fragmentation functions that are all compatible with present e (+)e(-) data. We also address the main theoretical uncertainties, whic h appear to be well under control.