Nuclear effects in Drell-Yan pair production in high-energy pA collisions

Eduardo Basso, Victor P. Goncalves, Michal Krelina, Jan Nemchik, and Roman Pasechnik
Phys. Rev. D 93, 094027 – Published 24 May 2016

Abstract

The Drell-Yan (DY) process of dilepton pair production off nuclei is not affected by final state interactions, energy loss, or absorption. A detailed phenomenological study of this process is thus convenient for investigation of the onset of initial-state effects in proton-nucleus (pA) collisions. In this paper, we present a comprehensive analysis of the DY process in pA interactions at RHIC and LHC energies in the color dipole framework. We analyze several effects affecting the nuclear suppression, RpA<1, of dilepton pairs, such as the saturation effects, restrictions imposed by energy conservation (the initial-state effective energy loss), and the gluon shadowing, as a function of the rapidity, the invariant mass of the dileptons, and their transverse momenta pT. In this analysis, we take into account not only the γ* but also the Z0 contribution to the production cross section, thus extending the predictions to large dilepton invariant masses. Besides the nuclear attenuation of produced dileptons at large energies and forward rapidities emerging due to the onset of shadowing effects, we predict a strong suppression at large pT, dilepton invariant masses, and Feynman variable xF caused by the initial-state interaction effects in kinematic regions where no shadowing is expected. The manifestations of nuclear effects are also investigated in terms of the correlation function in the azimuthal angle between the dilepton pair and a forward pion Δϕ for different energies, dilepton rapidities, and invariant dilepton masses. We predict that the characteristic double-peak structure of the correlation function around Δϕπ arises for very forward pions and large-mass dilepton pairs.

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  • Received 10 March 2016

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.93.094027

© 2016 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Particles & Fields

Authors & Affiliations

Eduardo Basso1,*, Victor P. Goncalves2,3,†, Michal Krelina4,‡, Jan Nemchik4,5,§, and Roman Pasechnik2,∥

  • 1Instituto de Física, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Caixa Postal 68528, Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro 21941-972, Brazil
  • 2Department of Astronomy and Theoretical Physics, Lund University, SE-223 62 Lund, Sweden
  • 3High and Medium Energy Group, Instituto de Física e Matemática, Universidade Federal de Pelotas, Pelotas, Rio Grande do Sol 96010-900, Brazil
  • 4Czech Technical University in Prague, FNSPE, Břehová 7, 11519 Prague, Czech Republic
  • 5Institute of Experimental Physics SAS, Watsonova 47, 04001 Košice, Slovakia

  • *eduardo.basso@thep.lu.se
  • victor.goncalves@thep.lu.se
  • michal.krelina@fjfi.cvut.cz
  • §nemcik@saske.sk
  • roman.pasechnik@thep.lu.se

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Issue

Vol. 93, Iss. 9 — 1 May 2016

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