Probing small-x gluons by low-mass Drell-Yan pairs at RHIC and LHC

Abstract

We calculate the transverse momentum distribution of low-mass Drell-Yan pairs in QCD perturbation theory with all-order resummation. We demonstrate that the transverse momentum distribution of low-mass Drell-Yan pairs is an advantageous source of constraints on the gluon distribution and its nuclear dependence. With the reduction in background, we argue that low-mass Drell-Yan pairs in the forward region provide a good and clean probe of small-x gluons at RHIC and LHC.

To appear in the proceedings of the seventeenth international conference on Ultra-Relativistic Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions (Quark Matter 2004), 5 pages and 3 figures