Energy loss of fast quarks in nuclei
- Gerald T.
- Patrick L.
- Jen-Chieh
- Joel Marshall
We report an analysis of the nuclear dependence of the yield of Drell-Yan (DY) dimuons from the 800 GeV/c proton bombardment of {sup 2}H, C, Ca, Fe, and W targets. A light-cone formulation of the DY process is employed in the rest frame of the nucleus. In this frame, for x{sub 2} <<x{sub 1}, DY production appears as bremsstrahlung of a virtual photon followed by decay into dileptons. We treat the two sources of nuclear suppression, energy loss and shadowing, in a consistent formulation. Shadowing, involving no free parameters, is calculated within the light-cone dipole formalism. Initial-state energy loss, the only unknown in the problem, is determined from afit to the nuclear-dependence ratio versus x{sub 1}. With the assumption of constant energy loss per unit path length, we find -dE/dz = 2.32 {+-} 0.52 {+-} 0.5 GeV/fm. This is the first observation of a nonzero energy loss of partons traveling in nuclear environment.
- Research Organization:
- Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL), Los Alamos, NM (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- USDOE
- OSTI ID:
- 975727
- Report Number(s):
- LA-UR-01-4960; TRN: US1006769
- Resource Relation:
- Conference: "Submitted to: Proceedings of the International Nuclear Physics Conference, July 29 - August 3, 2001, Berkeley, California"
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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