High-mass dimuon production inp¯Nandπ−N interactions at 125 GeV/c

We have studied muon pairs with an invariant mass between 4 and 9 GeV/$c^2$ produced in p¯N and ${\pi }^{\mathrm{-}}$N interactions at an incident momentum of 125 GeV/c. The experiment was performed at Fermilab using a tungsten target and a special beam enriched to contain 18% antiprotons. We compare differential distributions as functions of the dimuon invariant mass, Feynman x, transverse momentum, and decay angles of the dimuon to the predictions of the Drell-Yan model including QCD corrections. Quark structure functions for the p¯ and ${\pi }^{\mathrm{-}}$ are extracted. Comparisons of the antiproton data to the Drell-Yan model are significant because the cross sections depend principally on the valence-quark structure functions which are accurately determined by deep-inelastic scattering measurements. The measured absolute cross section (integrated over positive Feynman x and all transverse momenta) is 0.106±0.005±0.008 nb/nucleon for the p¯N interaction and 0.107±0.003±0.009 nb/nucleon for the ${\pi }^{\mathrm{-}}$N interaction, where the quoted errors are statistical and systematic, respectively. Normalization (K) factors that are required to bring the naive Drell-Yan and first-order QCD predictions into agreement with the measurements are extracted, and the uncertainties involved in such comparisons are examined.