Quark-gluon collisions as the source of dimuon production at large transverse momenta in proton-nucleon scattering

The hard scattering of quarks and gluons calculated within QCD produces dimuons of large mass and large transverse momenta. The latter are compensated by the emission of a “quark jet” in the opposite direction. Antiproton beams are less effective than proton beam in producing dimuons with large transverse momenta. The transverse momenta of W and Z bosons produced in proton-nucleon scattering amount to a sizeable fraction of M_W(Z).