Energy Loss of Fast Quarks in Nuclear Drell–Yan DimuonProduction

Abstract

The energy loss effect in nuclear matter, which is anothernuclear effect apart from the nuclear effects on the partondistribution as in the deep inelastic scattering process, can bemeasured best by the nuclear dependence of the high energy nuclearDrell–Yan process. By means of the quark energy lossparametrization given in literature and the nuclear partondistribution extracted only with lepton–nucleus deep inelasticscattering experimental data, measured Drell–Yan production crosssections are analysed for 800-GeV protons incident on a variety ofnuclear targets from FNAL E866. The average energy loss of quarksare given by fitting the Fe/Be and W/Be Drell–Yan cross sectionratios versus the incident parton momentum fraction.