TMDs and Drell-Yan Experiments at Fermilab and J-PARC

TL;DR

This paper reviews the role of Drell-Yan experiments in exploring TMD parton distributions, presents recent Fermilab results on angular distributions, and discusses future research prospects at Fermilab and J-PARC.

Contribution

It provides new experimental data on Drell-Yan angular distributions and constraints on the Boer-Mulders TMD functions, advancing understanding of sea-quark transverse momentum structures.

Findings

Fermilab E866 data on angular distributions in $p+p$ and $p+d$ collisions.

Comparison with pion-induced Drell-Yan data and TMD models.

Constraints on sea-quark Boer-Mulders functions.

Abstract

The roles of the Drell-Yan experiments in studying the Transverse-Momentum-Dependent (TMD) parton distributions are discussed. Recent results from the Fermilab E866 experiment on the angular distributions of Drell-Yan dimuons in $p+p$ and $p+d$ at 800 GeV/c are presented. These data are compared with the pion-induced Drell-Yan data, and with models which attribute the $\cos 2 \phi$ azimuthal distribution to the presence of the transverse-momentum-dependent Boer-Mulders structure function $h_1^\perp$. Constraints on the magnitude of the sea-quark $h_1^\perp$ structure functions are obtained. Future prospects for studying the TMDs with Drell-Yan experiments at Fermilab and J-PARC are also discussed.