Energy loss of fast quarks in nuclei

Abstract

We report an analysis of the nuclear dependence of the yield of Drell-Yan (DY) dimuons from the 800 GeV/c proton bombardment of $^2H$, C, Ca, Fe, and W targets. A light-cone formulation of the DY process is employed in the rest frame of the nucleus. In this frame, for $x_2\ll x_1$, DY production appears as bremsstrahlung of a virtual photon followed by decay into dileptons. We treat the two sources of nuclear suppression, energy loss and shadowing, in a consistent formulation. Shadowing, involving no free parameters, is calculated within the light-cone dipole formalism. Initial-state energy loss, the only unknown in the problem, is determined from a fit to the nuclear-dependence ratio versus $x_1$. With the assumption of constant energy loss per unit path length, we find $-dE/dz = 2.32 \pm 0.52\pm 0.5$ GeV/fm. This is the first observation of a nonzero energy loss of partons traveling in nuclear environment.