A comprehensive analysis of Drell-Yan production uncertainties and mass effects at moderate and low dilepton masses

Abstract

We present a thorough investigation of the sources of uncertainties to the Drell-Yan production using state-of-the-art predictions for both neutral and charged current channels, focusing on the low invariant mass region. Differential predictions for the invariant mass spectrum are provided at N${}^3$LO supplemented with exact charm and bottom quark mass effects calculated at $\mathcal{O}(\hat{I}{\pm }_s^2)$. The impact of PDF choices (including approximate N${}^3$LO), scale variations, the variation of the strong coupling constant, and impact heavy quark mass effects on the distributions is studied in detail. We also comment on the correlation of high-energy astrophysical processes with the low-mass DY region.

36 pages, 11 figures and 13 tables. Updated with JHEP accepted version