Mesonic and Binding Contributions to the Nuclear Drell-Yan Process

Abstract

We have evaluated the Drell-Yan cross section in nuclei paying special attention to the meson cloud contribution from pion and rho-meson, for which an accurate calculation using the meson nuclear spectral functions is used. Similarly, the nucleonic contribution is evaluated in terms of a relativistic nucleon spectral function. Fair agreement with experiment is found for different nuclei and the results show a sizeable contribution from the renormalized meson cloud. In order to reproduce the experiment a novel element is introduced, consisting of a gradual energy loss of the incoming proton in its pass through the nucleus which produces a strong A dependence at x_1 large.

11 pages, LaTeX, 4 PostScript figures, submitted to Physics Letters B

References in corpus (2)

• Radiative energy loss of high energy quarks in finite-size nuclear matter and quark-gluon plasma
• Pions in the nuclear medium and Drell-Yan scattering

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Nuclear Deep-Inelastic Lepton Scattering and Coherence Phenomena
• Parton energy loss limits and shadowing in Drell-Yan dimuon production
• $J/\psi$ reaction mechanisms and suppression in the nuclear medium
• Scaling within the Spectral Function approach
• Nuclear medium effects in Drell-Yan process
• Nucleon number dependence of the onset of anomalous J/psi suppression and the dynamics of nuclear collisions