No Arabic abstract
The Drell-Yan process provides important information on the internal structure of hadrons including transverse momentum dependent parton distribution functions (TMDs). In this work we present calculations for all leading twist structure functions describing the pion induced Drell-Yan process. The non-perturbative input for the TMDs is taken from the light-front constituent quark model, the spectator model, and available parametrizations of TMDs extracted from the experimental data. TMD evolution is implemented at Next-to-Leading Logarithmic precision for the first time for all asymmetries. Our results are compatible with the first experimental information, help to interpret the data from ongoing experiments, and will allow one to quantitatively assess the models in future when more precise data will become available.
We compute the nuclear corrections to the proton-deuteron Drell-Yan cross section for inclusive dilepton production, which, when combined with the proton-proton cross section, is used to determine the flavor asymmetry in the proton sea, dbar - ubar. In addition to nuclear smearing corrections that are known to be important at large values of the nucleons parton momentum fraction x_N, we also consider dynamical off-shell nucleon corrections associated with the modifications of the bound nucleon structure inside the deuteron, which we find to be significant at intermediate and large x_N values. We also provide estimates of the nuclear corrections at kinematics corresponding to existing and planned Drell-Yan experiments at Fermilab and J-PARC which aim to determine the dbar/ubar ratio for x < 0.6.
Generalized transverse momentum dependent parton distributions (GTMDs) are the most general parton correlation functions of hadrons. By considering the exclusive double Drell-Yan process it is shown for the first time how quark GTMDs can be measured. Specific GTMDs can be addressed by means of polarization observables.
The lepton angular distributions of the Drell-Yan process in the fixed-target experiments are investigated by NLO and NNLO perturbative QCD. We present the calculated angular parameters $lambda$, $mu$, $ u$ and the degree of violation of the Lam-Tung relation, $1-lambda-2 u$, for the E615 experiment as well as predictions for the COMPASS experiment. Many salient features of transverse momentum and rapidity dependence could be qualitatively understood by a geometric approach.
We discuss the transverse momentum Q_T distribution of Drell-Yan pair, produced in collisions of transversely polarized protons. We calculate the transversely polarized Drell-Yan cross section up to order alpha_s in the dimensional regularization scheme, which gives QCD prediction at large Q_T. For small Q_T region, we include all-orders resummation of large logarithms due to emission of soft gluons up to next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy. At intermediate Q_T region, the resummation formula is matched with the fixed-order alpha_s perturbative results in a systematic way, so that we derive the cross section with uniform accuracy over the entire range of Q_T.
Although the proton was discovered about 100 years ago, its spin structure still remains a mystery. Recent studies suggest that the orbital angular momentum of sea quarks could significantly contribute to the protons spin. The SeaQuest experiment, which recently completed data collection, probed the unpolarized light quark sea distributions of the proton using the Drell-Yan process. Its successor, the SpinQuest (E1039), will access the $bar{u}$ and $bar{d}$ Sivers functions using polarized NH$_3$ and ND$_3$ targets. A non-zero Sivers asymmetry, observed in SpinQuest, would be a strong indication of non-zero sea-quark orbital angular momentum. The SpinQuest experiment can also probe the sea quarks transversity distribution, which is relevant for the determination of protons tensor charge. Recent study suggests that sea-quarks might contribute significantly to deuterons tensor polarized structure functions. This can be further probed in SpinQuest using tensor polarized ND$_3$ target. The current status and future plan of the experiment are presented.