We analyze the Drell-Yan lepton pair production at forward rapidity at the Large Hadron Collider. Using the dipole framework for the computation of the cross section we find a significant suppression in comparison to the collinear factorization formula due to saturation effects in the dipole cross section. We develop a twist expansion in powers of Q_s^2/M^2 where Q_s is the saturation scale and M the invariant mass of the produced lepton pair. For the nominal LHC energy the leading twist description is sufficient down to masses of 6 GeV. Below that value the higher twist terms give a significant contribution.
Motivated by the recent work of Brzeminski, 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 corrections. We show that it generates a good description of the forward Drell--Yan cross section dependence on the invariant mass of the lepton pair both for LHCb and ATLAS data.
Spectral features in LHC dileptonic events may signal radiative corrections coming from new degrees of freedom, notably dark matter and mediators. Using simplified models, we show how these features can reveal the fundamental properties of the dark sector, such as self-conjugation, spin and mass of dark matter, and the quantum numbers of the mediator. Distributions of both the invariant mass $m_{ell ell}$ and the Collins-Soper scattering angle $costheta_{CS}$ are studied to pinpoint these properties. We derive constraints on the models from LHC measurements of $m_{ell ell}$ and $costheta_{CS}$, which are competitive with direct detection and jets + Missing Energy searches. We find that in certain scenarios the $costheta_{CS}$ spectrum provides the strongest bounds, underlying the importance of scattering angle measurements for non-resonant new physics.
We study Drell-Yan (DY) dilepton production in proton(deuterium)-nucleus and in nucleus-nucleus collisions within the light-cone color dipole formalism. This approach is especially suitable for predicting nuclear effects in the DY cross section for heavy ion collisions, as it provides the impact parameter dependence of nuclear shadowing and transverse momentum broadening, quantities that are not available from the standard parton model. For p(D)+A collisions we calculate nuclear shadowing and investigate nuclear modification of the DY transverse momentum distribution at RHIC and LHC for kinematics corresponding to coherence length much longer than the nuclear size. Calculations are performed separately for transversely and longitudinally polarized DY photons, and predictions are presented for the dilepton angular distribution. Furthermore, we calculate nuclear broadening of the mean transverse momentum squared of DY dileptons as function of the nuclear mass number and energy. We also predict nuclear effects for the cross section of the DY process in heavy ion collisions. We found a substantial nuclear shadowing for valence quarks, stronger than for the sea.
In this paper we investigate consequences of an assumption that the discrepancy of the predicted and observed W+W- production cross sections at the LHC is caused by the missing contribution of the double Drell-Yan process (DDYP). Using our simple model of DDYP of Ref. [1] we show that inclusion of this production mechanism leads to a satisfactory, parameter-free description of the two-lepton mass distribution for 0-jet W+W- events and the four-lepton mass distribution for ZZ events. In such a scenario the Higgs-boson contribution is no longer necessary to describe the data. An experimental programme to prove or falsify such an assumption is proposed.
A rapidity gap program with great potential can be realized at the Large Hadron Collider, LHC, by adding a few simple forward shower counters (FSCs) along the beam line on both sides of the main central detectors, such as CMS. Measurements of single diffractive cross sections down to the lowest masses can be made with an efficient level-1 trigger. Exceptionally, the detectors also make feasible the study of Central Diffractive Excitation, and in particular the reaction g + g to g + g, in the color singlet channel, effectively using the LHC as a gluon-gluon collider.