Pion-Exchange and Fermi-Motion Effects on the Proton-Deuteron Drell-Yan Process

Abstract

Within a nuclear model that the deuteron has NN and πNN components, we derive convolution formula for investigating the Drell-Yan process in proton-deuteron (pd) reactions. The contribution from the πNN component is expressed in terms of a pion momentum distribution that depends sensitively on the πNN form factor. With a πNN form factor determined by fitting the πN scattering data up to invariant mass W = 1.3 GeV, we find that the pion-exchange and nucleon Fermi-motion effects can change significantly the ratios between the proton-deuteron and proton-proton Drell-Yan cross sections, R_{pd/pp} = σ^{pd}/(2σ^{pp}), in the region where the partons emitted from the target deuteron are in the Bjorken x_2 > 0.4 region. The calculated ratios R_{pd/pp} at 800 GeV agree with the available data. Predictions at 120 GeV for analyzing the forthcoming data from Fermilab are presented.

27 pages, 10 figures. A couple of new numerical results are added. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1106.5564

Cited by in corpus (5)

• The Asymmetry of Antimatter in the Proton
• The Sea of Quarks and Antiquarks in the Nucleon: a Review
• Nuclear effects in the proton-deuteron Drell-Yan process
• Measurement of flavor asymmetry of light-quark sea in the proton with Drell-Yan dimuon production in $p+p$ and $p+d$ collisions at 120 GeV
• Flavor asymmetry from the non-perturbative nucleon sea