Dileptons from P-Nucleus Collisions

TL;DR

This paper reviews recent experimental results on dilepton production in fixed-target experiments, highlighting the need for further research to clarify scaling violations, polarization effects, and nuclear medium influences in Drell-Yan processes.

Contribution

It discusses the current status of QCD tests using dilepton production data and emphasizes areas requiring additional experimental and theoretical investigation.

Findings

Evidence for scaling violation in Drell-Yan process remains inconclusive.

Nuclear medium effects, including parton energy-loss, are significant in dilepton production.

Further studies are necessary to understand polarization of Drell-Yan pairs.

Abstract

Various QCD tests using recent results from fixed-target dimuon production experiments at Fermilab are discussed. We emphasize that clear evidence for scaling-violation in the Drell-Yan process remains to be established. Further experimental and theoretical work are needed to understand the polarization of the Drell-Yan pairs. The nuclear medium effects for dilepton productions are also discussed. In particular, the energy-loss of partons traversing nuclear medium is deduced from the Drell-Yan nuclear dependence.