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

The hadroproduction of lepton pairs with mass Q and finite transverse momentum Q_T is described in perturbative QCD by the same partonic subprocesses as prompt photon production. We demonstrate that, like prompt photon production, lepton pair production is dominated by quark-gluon scattering in the region Q_T>Q/2. This feature leads to sensitivity to the gluon density in kinematical regimes accessible in collider and fixed target experiments, and it provides a new independent...

We study the transverse momentum distribution of low-mass lepton pairs produced in hadronic scattering, using the perturbative QCD factorization approach. We argue that the distribution at large transverse momentum, $Q_T \gg Q$, with the pair's invariant mass $Q$ as low as $Q \sim \Lambda_{\mathrm{QCD}}$, can be systematically factorized into universal parton-to-lepton pair fragmentation functions, parton distributions, and perturbatively calculable partonic hard parts evalua...

We compute for the first time the lepton-pair rapidity distribution in the photon-mediated Drell-Yan process to next-to-next-to-next-to-leading order (N$^3$LO) in QCD. The calculation is based on the qT-subtraction method, suitably extended to this order for quark-antiquark initiated Born processes. Our results display sizeable QCD corrections at N$^3$LO over the full rapidity region and provide a fully independent confirmation of the recent results for the total Drell-Yan cr...

In the framework of the QCD dipole model at high energy, we present an analytic evaluation of the dipole pair density in two limits in which the parent dipole is much larger/smaller than the distance between the two child dipoles. Due to conformal symmetry, the two limits give an identical result. The power-law correlation between dipoles explicitly breaks the factorization of target-averaged scattering amplitudes.

Motivated by the recent work of Brzemi\'nski, Motyka, Sadzikowski and Stebel in arXiv:1611.04449, where forward Drell--Yan production is studied in proton-proton collisions at the LHC, we improve their calculation by introducing an unintegrated gluon density obtained in arXiv:1209.1353 and arXiv:1301.5283 from a fit to combined HERA data at small values of Bjorken $x$. This gluon density was calculated within the BFKL formalism at next-to-leading order with collinear correcti...

The physics of gluon saturation and non-linear evolution at small values of parton momentum fraction x in the proton and nucleus is discussed in the context of experimental results at HERA and RHIC. The rich physics potential of low-x QCD studies at the LHC is discussed and some measurements in pp, pA and AA collisions accessible with the Compact Muon Solenoid (CMS) experiment are presented.

The description of the Drell-Yan (DY) transverse momentum spectrum requires matching of fixed order QCD calculations with soft gluon resummation up to all orders in the QCD coupling. It has been noticed in the literature that a consistent description of DY data in a wide kinematic regime from fixed-target to LHC energies is problematic. In this talk the predictions for transverse momentum spectrum of DY data coming from experiments in very different kinematic ranges (NuSea, R...

On the basis of the results of a new renormalisation group improved small-x resummation scheme, we argue that the range of validity of perturbative calculations is considerably extended in rapidity with respect to leading log expectations. We thus provide predictions for the energy dependence of the gluon Green function in its perturbative domain and for the resummed splitting function. As in previous analyses, high-energy exponents are reduced to phenomenologically acceptabl...

The non-perturbative processes - the internal transverse motion of partons inside hadrons, which gives rise to their intrinsic transverse momentum (intrinsic-kT) - and multiple soft gluon emissions that need to be resummed, are dominant contributions to the low transverse momentum of the Drell-Yan (DY) pair cross section. Therefore, this part of the DY spectra serves as a powerful tool for a better understanding of such processes, which is the focus of the study presented her...

Massive lepton-pair production, the Drell-Yan process, should be a good source of independent constraints on the gluon density, free from the experimental and theoretical complications of photon isolation that beset studies of prompt photon production. We provide predictions for the spin-averaged and spin-dependent differential cross sections as a function of transverse momentum $Q_T$.