ID: hep-ph/0409003

Probing small-$x$ gluons by low-mass Drell-Yan pairs at colliders

August 31, 2004

View on ArXiv
George Kent State University Fai, Jianwei Iowa State University Qiu, Xiaofei Kent State University Zhang
High Energy Physics - Phenom...

The transverse-momentum ($Q_T$) distribution of low-mass Drell-Yan pairs is calculated in QCD perturbation theory with all-order resummation of $\alpha_s (\alpha_s \ln(Q^2_T/Q^2))^n$ type terms. We demonstrate that the rapidity distribution of low-mass Drell-Yan pairs at large-enough transverse momentum is an advantageous source of constraints on the gluon distribution and its nuclear dependence. We argue that low-mass Drell-Yan pairs in the forward region provide a good and clean probe of small-$x$ gluons at collider energies.

Similar papers 1