https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-013-2361-6
Regular Article - Theoretical Physics
Improving the Drell–Yan probe of small x partons at the LHC via a k t cut
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:
14
December
2012
Revised:
19
February
2013
Published online:
20
March
2013
We show that the observation of the Drell–Yan production of low-mass lepton-pairs (M≲20 GeV) at high rapidities (Y≳3) at the LHC can make a direct measurement of parton distribution functions (PDFs) in the low x region, x≲10−4. We describe a procedure that greatly reduces the sensitivity of the predictions to the choice of the factorization scale and, in particular, show how, by imposing a cutoff on the transverse momentum of the lepton-pair, the data are able to probe PDFs in the important low scale, low x domain. We include the effects of the Sudakov suppression factor.
© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg and Società Italiana di Fisica, 2013
