The Dilepton-Production Cross Section in Principal Value Resummation

Abstract

Using a recent calculation of the perturbative hard part for dilepton production that sums large threshold corrections to all orders in perturbative QCD, we compute the corresponding cross sections. The hard part has been evaluated using principal value resummation and contains all singular momentum-dependent corrections. We also include a resummation of large Sudakov terms, which are independent of parton momenta. We give predictions for the dilepton-mass distribution, the rapidity distribution and the rapidity-integrated $K$-factor at fixed-target energies and compare with various experimental results in several kinematic regimes. We find that principal value resummation produces cross sections that are finite and well-behaved. For both protons and anti-protons on fixed targets, the resummed cross sections are, in general, in excellent agreement with the data.