The pionic Drell-Yan process: a brief survey

Abstract

The Drell-Yan process is an invaluable tool for probing the structure of hadrons, and the pion-induced Drell-Yan process is unique in its sensitivity to several subtleties of the partonic structure. This is a brief review of the pionic Drell-Yan process with particular emphasis on the dilepton angular distributions and nuclear modification of the parton distributions (the EMC effect).