Absolute Drell-Yan Dimuon Cross Sections in 800 GeV/c pp and pd Collisions

Abstract

The Fermilab E866/NuSea Collaboration has measured the Drell-Yan dimuon cross sections in 800 GeV/$c$ $pp$ and $pd$ collisions. This represents the first measurement of the Drell-Yan cross section in $pp$ collisions over a broad kinematic region and the most extensive study to date of the Drell-Yan cross section in $pd$ collisions. The results indicate that recent global parton distribution fits provide a good description of the light antiquark sea in the nucleon over the Bjorken-$x$ range $0.03 \lesssim x < 0.15$, but overestimate the valence quark distributions as $x \to 1$.