Center-of-mass energy dependence of intrinsic-$k_T$ distributions obtained from Drell-Yan production

Abstract

The internal motion of partons inside hadrons has been studied through its impact on very low transverse momentum spectra of Drell-Yan (DY) pairs created in hadron-hadron collisions. We study DY production at next-to-leading order using the Parton Branching (PB) method which describes the evolution of transverse momentum dependent parton distributions. The main focus is on studying the intrinsic transverse momentum distribution (intrinsic-$k_T$) as a function of the center-of-mass energy $\sqrt{s}$. While collinear parton shower Monte Carlo event generators require intrinsic transverse momentum distributions strongly dependent on $\sqrt{s}$, this is not the case for the PB method. We perform a detailed study of the impact of soft parton emissions. We show that by requiring a minimal transverse momentum, $q_0$, of a radiated parton, a dependence of the width of the intrinsic-$k_T$ distribution as a function of $\sqrt{s}$ is observed. This dependence becomes stronger with increasing $q_0$.

Comments: Updated with published version in EPJC, 85(3), 278