Threshold-Resummed Cross Section for the Drell-Yan Process in Pion-Nucleon Collisions at COMPASS

Abstract

We present a study of the Drell-Yan process in pion-proton collisions including next-to-leading-logarithmic threshold-resummed contributions. We analyze rapidity-integrated as well as rapidity-differential cross sections in the kinematic regime relevant for the COMPASS fixed target experiment. We find that resummation leads to a significant enhancement of the cross section compared to fixed-order calculations in this regime. Particularly large corrections arise at large forward and backward rapidities of the lepton pair. We also study the scale dependence of the cross section and find it to be substantially reduced by threshold resummation.