Influence of quark energy loss on extracting nuclear sea quark distribution from nuclear Drell–Yan experimental data

Abstract

By means of two typical kinds of quark energy loss parametrization and the nuclear parton distributions determined only with lepton-nuclear deep inelastic scattering experimental data, a leading order analysis is performed on the proton-induced Drell–Yan differential cross section ratios of tungsten versus deuterium as a function of the quark momentum fraction in the beam proton and target nuclei. It is found that the theoretical results with quark energy loss are in good agreement with the experimental data. The quark energy loss effect produces approximately 3% to 11% suppression on the Drell–Yan differential cross section ratios RW/D in the range 0.05 ≤ x2 ≤ 0.3. The application of nuclear Drell–Yan data with heavy targets is remarkably subject to difficulty in the constraint of the nuclear sea quark distribution.