Power corrections and renormalons in Drell-Yan production

Abstract

The resummed Drell-Yan cross section in the double-logarithmic approximation suffers from infrared renormalons. Their presence was interpreted as an indication for non-perturbative corrections of order $\lqcd/(Q(1-z))$. We find that, once soft gluon emission is accurately taken into account, the leading renormalon divergence in the resummed cross section is cancelled by higher-order perturbative contributions in the exponent of the resummed cross section. From this evidence, `higher twist' corrections to the hard cross section in Drell-Yan production should therefore intervene only at order $\lqcd^2/((Q^2 (1-z)^2)$ in the entire perturbative domain $Q (1-z) > \lqcd$. We compare this result with hadronic event shape variables, comment on the potential universality of non-perturbative corrections to resummed cross sections, and on possible implications for phenomenology.