Pion-induced Drell-Yan processes and the flavor-dependent EMC effect

Abstract

Pion-induced Drell-Yan processes are proposed as a promising tool with which to measure the flavor dependence of the European Muon Collaboration (EMC) effect, that is, the flavor-dependent modification of quark distributions in the nuclear medium. Existing pionic Drell-Yan data are compared with calculations using a recent model for nuclear quark distributions that incorporates flavor-dependent nuclear effects. While no firm conclusions can yet be drawn, we find that existing Drell-Yan data likely imply a flavor dependence of the EMC effect. We demonstrate that pion-induced Drell-Yan experiments on nuclear targets can access new aspects of the EMC effect not probed in deep inelastic scattering and can therefore provide important new constrains on the nuclear quark distributions. Predictions for possible future pion-induced Drell-Yan experiments are also presented.