Drell-Yan dilepton production in relativistic heavy-ion collisions at RHIC
- Received Date: 2010-11-30
- Accepted Date: 2010-12-30
- Available Online: 2011-09-05
Abstract: We investigate the lepton pair production with the Drell-Yan process in relativistic heavy ion collisions by computing the double differential cross section dσ/dM2dy and dσ/dM2dxF at the next-to-leading order in p+Au and Au+Au collisions with √sNN =200 GeV at RHIC. The resulting nuclear modification factors RpAu and RAuAu show strong sensitivity to the cold nuclear matter (CNM) effects and could probe the CNM effects at a very wide region of the longitudinal momentum fraction x. The variation of R with the invariant mass M, the rapidity y and the Feynman variable xF is shown and we find that the nuclear modification factor for the double differential cross section could be smaller than 0.4 in some kinematic regions of high-energy nucleus-nucleus reactions at RHIC.