Next-to-leading order vs. quark off-shellness and intrinsic k_T in the Drell-Yan process

Abstract

We calculate the effects of next-to-leading order perturbative QCD as well as of the quark transverse motion and off-shellness on the Drell-Yan process cross section. By studying the s->infinity behaviour of the cross section in these approaches, we find that the effects of quark off-shellness and intrinsic-k_T parametrize those of higher twists. In particular, the off-shellness of partons generates part of the K-factor type corrections to the leading order cross section. Higher twist contributions to the p_T-spectrum of the Drell-Yan pairs are found to be large for presently accessible energies. The evolution of quark off-shellness distribution with the hard scale is also studied.

Comments: v2: shortened, references added, typos corrected