Nonperturbative contributions to a resummed leptonic angular distribution in inclusive neutral vector boson production

Abstract

We present an analysis of nonperturbative contributions to the transverse momentum distribution of $Z/\gamma^*$ bosons produced at hadron colliders. The new data on the angular distribution $\phi^*_\eta$ of Drell-Yan pairs measured at the Tevatron is shown to be in excellent agreement with a perturbative QCD prediction based on the Collins-Soper-Sterman (CSS) resummation formalism at NNLL accuracy. Using these data, we determine the nonperturbative component of the CSS resummed cross section and estimate its dependence on arbitrary resummation scales and other factors. With the scale dependence included at the NNLL level, a significant nonperturbative component is needed to describe the angular data.