https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-012-2069-z
Regular Article - Theoretical Physics
Drell–Yan as a probe of small x partons at the LHC
1
Institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology, University of Durham, Durham, DH1 3LE, UK
2
Instituto de Física, Universidade de São Paulo, C.P. 66318, 05315-970, São Paulo, Brazil
3
Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute, NRC Kurchatov Institute, Gatchina, St. Petersburg, 188300, Russia
* e-mail: a.d.martin@durham.ac.uk
Received:
30
May
2012
Revised:
19
June
2012
Published online:
13
July
2012
The predictions of Drell–Yan production of low-mass lepton pairs, at high rapidity at the LHC, are known to depend sensitively on the choice of factorization and renormalization scales. We show how this sensitivity can be greatly reduced by fixing the factorization scale of the LO contribution based on the known NLO matrix element, so that observations of this process at the LHC can make direct measurements of parton distribution functions in the low x domain; x≲10−4.
© Springer-Verlag / Società Italiana di Fisica, 2012
