Absolute Drell-Yan Dimuon Cross Sections in 800 GeV/c pp and pd Collisions

TL;DR

This paper reports the first broad-kinematic-region measurement of Drell-Yan dimuon cross sections in 800 GeV/c proton-proton and proton-deuteron collisions, providing insights into nucleon parton distributions.

Contribution

It presents the first extensive measurement of Drell-Yan cross sections in $pp$ collisions and evaluates the accuracy of global parton distribution fits.

Findings

Global fits describe light antiquark distributions well.

Fits overestimate valence quark distributions at high x.

Provides new data for nucleon structure models.

Abstract

The Fermilab E866/NuSea Collaboration has measured the Drell-Yan dimuon cross sections in 800 GeV/$c$ $pp$ and $pd$ collisions. This represents the first measurement of the Drell-Yan cross section in $pp$ collisions over a broad kinematic region and the most extensive study to date of the Drell-Yan cross section in $pd$ collisions. The results indicate that recent global parton distribution fits provide a good description of the light antiquark sea in the nucleon over the Bjorken-$x$ range $0.03 \lesssim x < 0.15$, but overestimate the valence quark distributions as $x \to 1$.