Eur. Phys. J. C 21, 613-620 (2001)
DOI: 10.1007/s100520100771
Constraints for the nuclear sea quark distributions from the Drell-Yan process at the SPS
K.J. Eskola1, 2, V.J. Kolhinen1, C.A. Salgado3 and R.L. Thews41 Department of Physics, University of Jyväskylä, P.O. Box 35, 40351 Jyväskylä, Finland
2 Helsinki Institute of Physics, P.O. Box 9, 00014 University of Helsinki, Finland
3 Laboratoire de Physique Théorique (Laboratoire associé au Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique - URA D0063) , Université de Paris XI, Bâtiment 211, 91405 Orsay Cedex, France
4 Department of Physics, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85721, USA
(Received: 6 October 2000 / Revised version: 2 July 2001 / Published online: 19 September 2001 -© Springer-Verlag / Società Italiana di Fisica 2001 )
Abstract
Nuclear modifications to the Drell-Yan dilepton production cross
sections in
p+A and A+A collisions in the leading twist
approximation are caused by nuclear effects in the parton distributions
of
bound nucleons. For non-isoscalar nuclei, isospin corrections
must also
be considered. We calculate these effects
for p+A and
Pb+Pb collisions at CERN SPS
energies. Our goal is to place constraints on nuclear effects
in sea quark distributions in the region
. We show
that the net nuclear corrections remain small for p+A collisions
at
Elab=450 GeV. However, in
Pb+Pb
collisions at
E
lab=158 AGeV, effects of
are predicted
at large
M. The data collected by the NA50 collaboration could thus
be used
to constrain the nuclear effects in the sea quark distributions
in the
region of the EMC effect,
.
© Società Italiana di Fisica, Springer-Verlag 2001
