Threshold-Resummed Cross Section for the Drell-Yan Process in Pion-Nucleon Collisions at COMPASS

TL;DR

This paper investigates the impact of threshold resummation on the Drell-Yan cross section in pion-proton collisions at COMPASS, showing significant enhancements and reduced scale dependence compared to fixed-order calculations.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed analysis of threshold-resummed contributions to the Drell-Yan process in pion-nucleon collisions relevant for COMPASS.

Findings

Resummation significantly increases the predicted cross section.

Large corrections are observed at high rapidities.

Scale dependence is notably reduced by resummation.

Abstract

We present a study of the Drell-Yan process in pion-proton collisions including next-to-leading-logarithmic threshold-resummed contributions. We analyze rapidity-integrated as well as rapidity-differential cross sections in the kinematic regime relevant for the COMPASS fixed target experiment. We find that resummation leads to a significant enhancement of the cross section compared to fixed-order calculations in this regime. Particularly large corrections arise at large forward and backward rapidities of the lepton pair. We also study the scale dependence of the cross section and find it to be substantially reduced by threshold resummation.