Drell-Yan diffraction: breakdown of QCD factorisation

TL;DR

This paper investigates the diffractive Drell-Yan process at high energies using the color dipole approach, highlighting the breakdown of QCD factorization due to soft-hard interaction interplay and providing predictions for collider experiments.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed analysis of QCD factorization breakdown in diffractive Drell-Yan processes within the color dipole framework, including predictions for RHIC and LHC.

Findings

QCD factorization breaks down in diffractive Drell-Yan due to soft-hard interaction interplay

Predictions for total and differential cross sections at RHIC and LHC energies

Unusual properties of observables caused by factorization breakdown

Abstract

We consider the diffractive Drell-Yan process in proton-(anti)proton collisions at high energies in the color dipole approach. The calculations are performed at forward rapidities of the leptonic pair. Effect of eikonalization of the universal "bare"dipole-target elastic amplitude in the saturation regime takes into account the principal part of the gap survival probability. We present predictions for the total and differential cross sections of the single diffractive lepton pair production at RHIC and LHC energies. We analyze implications of the QCD factorisation breakdown in the diffractive Drell-Yan process, which is caused by a specific interplay of the soft and hard interactions, and resulting in rather unusual properties of the corresponding observables.