Intrinsic transverse momentum and the polarized Drell-Yan process

Abstract

In this paper we study the cross section at leading order in $1/Q$ for polarized Drell-Yan scattering at measured lepton-pair transverse momentum $Q_T$. We find that for a hadron with spin $1/2$ the quark content at leading order is described by six distribution functions for each flavor, which depend on both the lightcone momentum fraction $x$, and the quark transverse momentum $\bbox{k}_T^2$. These functions are illustrated for a free-quark ensemble. The cross sections for both longitudinal and transverse polarizations are expressed in terms of convolution integrals over the distribution functions.