Nuclear Dependence of Proton-Induced Drell-Yan Dimuon Production at 120 GeV at Seaquest

Thesis/Dissertation · Fri Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 2016

DOI:https://doi.org/10.2172/1294515· OSTI ID:1294515

Dannowitz, Bryan P. ^[1]

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1. Illinois U., Urbana

A measurement of the atomic mass (A) dependence of p + A → µ+µ- + X Drell-Yan dimuons produced by 120 GeV protons is presented here. The data was taken by the SeaQuest experiment at Fermilab using a proton beam extracted from its Main Injector. Over 61,000 dimuon pairs were recorded with invariant mass 4.2 < Mγ* < 10 GeV and target parton momentum fraction 0.1 ≤ x² ≤ 0.5 for nuclear targets 1H, 2H, C, Fe, and W . The ratio of dimuon yields per nucleon (Y ) for heavy nuclei versus 2H, RDY = 2 2 Y (A)/Y ( H) ≈ u¯(A)(x)/u¯( H)(x), is sensitive to modifications in the anti-quark sea distributions in nuclei for the case of proton-induced Drell-Yan. The data analyzed here and in the future of SeaQuest will provide tighter constraints on various models that attempt to define the anomalous behavior of nuclear modification as seen in deep inelastic lepton scattering, a phenomenon generally known as the EMC effect.

• Research Organization: Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory (FNAL), Batavia, IL (United States)
• Sponsoring Organization: USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP) (SC-25)
• DOE Contract Number: AC02-07CH11359
• OSTI ID: 1294515
• Report Number(s): FERMILAB-THESIS-2016-13; 1479884
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS