2016/05/31 by Martin Lambertsen, Werner Vogelsang · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Drell–Yan process #Electron #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research #Lambda #Lepton #Nuclear physics #Order (exchange) #Particle physics #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Parton #Perturbation theory (quantum mechanics) #Perturbative QCD #Physics #Quantum Chromodynamics and Particle Interactions #Quantum chromodynamics #Quantum mechanics #hep-ex #hep-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.93.114013
published as Phys. Rev. D 93, 114013 (2016) · 17 pages, 10 figures. Figures with better numerical accuracy. Journal version
openalex publication_date 2016/06/14 · arxiv created 2016/09/12 · arxiv updated 2016/09/13 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We present a comprehensive comparison of the available experimental data for the Drell-Yan lepton angular coefficients \ensuremathλ and \ensuremathν to calculations at leading and next-to-leading order of perturbative QCD. To obtain the next-to-leading order corrections, we make use of publicly available numerical codes that allow us to compute the Drell-Yan cross section at second order in perturbation theory and from which the contributions we need can be extracted. Our comparisons reveal that perturbative QCD is able to describe the experimental data overall rather well, especially at colliders, but also in the fixed-target regime. On the basis of the angular coefficients alone, there appears to be little (if any) convincing evidence for effects that go beyond fixed-order collinear factorized perturbation theory, although the presence of such effects is not ruled out.