Transverse-momentum resummation: a perturbative study of Z production at the Tevatron

Abstract

We consider transverse-momentum (q_T) resummation for Drell--Yan lepton pair production in hadron collisions. At small values of q_T, the logarithmically-enhanced QCD contributions are resummed up to next-to-leading logarithmic accuracy. At intermediate and large values of q_T, resummation is consistently combined with the fixed-order perturbative result. We present numerical results for e^+e^- pairs from the decay of Z bosons produced at Tevatron energies. We perform a detailed study of the scale dependence of the results to estimate the corresponding perturbative uncertainty. We comment on the comparison with the available Tevatron data.

Comments: 24 pages, 12 ps figures, added comments and references; results unchanged