English

NNLO corrections to massive lepton-pair production in longitudinally polarized proton-proton collisions

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2010-04-05 v3

Abstract

We present the full next-to-next-to-leading order (NNLO) coefficient functions for the polarized cross section dΔσ/dQd\Delta \sigma/dQ for the Drell-Yan process p+pl+l+Xp + p\to l^+l^- + 'X'. Here X'X' denotes any inclusive hadronic state and QQ represents the invariant mass of the lepton pair. All QCD partonic subprocesses have been included provided the lepton pair is created by a virtual photon, which is a valid approximation for Q<50Q<50 GeV. Unlike the differential distribution w.r.t. transverse momentum the dominant subprocess for the integrated cross section is given by q+qˉγ+Xq+\bar q \to \gamma^* + 'X' and its higher order corrections so that massive lepton pair production provides us with an excellent tool to measure the polarized anti-quark densities. Our calculations are carried out using the method of nn-dimensional regularization by making a special choice for the γ5\gamma_5 matrix. We give predictions for double longitudinal spin asymmetry measurements at the RHIC.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.hep-ph/0311304,
  title  = {NNLO corrections to massive lepton-pair production in longitudinally polarized proton-proton collisions},
  author = {V. Ravindran and J. Smith and W. L. van Neerven},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:hep-ph/0311304},
  year   = {2010}
}

Comments

45 pages, 22 figures. Due to a bug in our program the mass factorization plots in fig. 8-11 are changed. All parton density sets, in particular the set BB1 (J. Blumlein, H. Bottcher), lead to an improvement in the scale dependence while going from LO to NLO and then to NNLO