Massive lepton pairs as a prompt photon surrogate

We discuss the transverse momentum distribution for the production of massive lepton pairs in hadron reactions at fixed target and collider energies within the context of next-to-leading order perturbative quantum chromodynamics. For values of the transverse momentum QT greater than roughly half the pair mass Q, QT>Q/2, we show that the differential cross section is dominated by subprocesses initiated by incident gluons. Massive lepton-pair differential cross sections are an advantageous source of constraints on the gluon density, free from the experimental and theoretical complications of photon isolation that beset studies of prompt photon production. We compare calculations with data and provide predictions for the differential cross section as a function of QT in proton-antiproton reactions at center-of-mass energies of 1.8 TeV, and in proton-nucleon reactions at fixed target and CERN LHC energies. copyright 1998 The American Physical Society