Correlations between transverse energy production and the Drell-Yan process in heavy ion collisions at high energy

The expression for the Drell-Yan cross section is presented which takes into account the geometry of heavy ion collisions. The Drell-Yan cross section is shown to be proportional to the transverse energy produced within a fixed rapidity interval. A dependence steeper than linear of the cross section for production of dileptons with masses larger than about 2 GeV on the transverse energy in a given rapidity bin would be a clear-cut signal for the formation of the quark-gluon plasma. (orig.)