Electromagnetic effects in the production of dimuons at large transverse momentum

The effects of single-photon corrections to the simple Drell-Yan mechanism $\text{(}\text{q}\text{q}\text{→ γ}{}^1\text{→ μ}{}^{\mathrm{+}}\text{μ}{}^{\mathrm{?}}\text{)}$ are studied for massive dimuons at large transverse momentum in the processes $\text{π}{}^{\mathrm{?}}\text{p}\text{→ μ}{}^{\mathrm{+}}\text{μ}{}^{\mathrm{?}}\text{X and}\text{p}\text{p}\text{→ μ}{}^{\mathrm{+}}\text{μ}{}^{\mathrm{?}}\text{X}$. It is found that single-photon emission by the muons constitutes an important correction to the effects of single-gluon emission by the quarks for very massive (M_μμ² ? m_μ²) muon pairs.Interference of the amplitude for photon emission from the muons with that for radiation from the quarks generates an asymmetry in the muon angular distribution. The forward-backward asymmetry is studied in detail as a function of pair mass and transverse momentum.