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 $x \to 1$.
Measurment of the scaling form of the MU+ MU- cross section in the XL range-0.05 to 0.05 from the hydrogen target.
Measurment of the scaling form of the MU+ MU- cross section in the XL range0.05 to 0.10 from the hydrogen target.
Measurment of the scaling form of the MU+ MU- cross section in the XL range0.10 to 0.15 from the hydrogen target.
We report a high-statistics study of the reaction p+W→μ++μ−+X with use of an intense 400-GeV/c proton beam, a magnetized-iron beam dump, and a wide-acceptance detector. Using data near xF=0, we have extracted the nucleon sea-quark distribution and find it to be a factor 1.6±0.3 larger than that obtained by inelastic charged-current neutrino scattering. We then compare the Drell-Yan prediction with our data including the previously unexplored region of large xF and find excellent agreement for a wide range of μ-pair invariant mass.
Dimuon mass mass distribution at XFP=0.1.
Dimuon production for varying mass as function of XFP.
Dimuon production for varying mass as function of XFP.