Large perturbative corrections to the Drell-Yan process in QCD

The total cross section $\text{d}\text{σ}\text{d}\text{Q}{}^2$ for the production of a muon pair of invariant mass Q²via the Drell-Yan mechanism and the Feynman x_F differential cross section $\text{d}{}^2\text{σ}\text{d}\text{Q}{}^2\text{d}\text{x}{}_{\mathrm{<mtext>F</mtext>}}$ are calculated in QCD retaining all terms up to order α_s(Q². The calculations are performed using dimensional regularisation of the intermediary infrared and collinear singularities, but we present our results in a form independent of such details. The corrections to both these cross sections coming from radiative corrections to the lowest-order $\text{q}\text{q}$ annihilation diagram are found to be large at present values of Q² and S when the cross section is expressed in terms of parton densities derived from leptonproduction, for all Drell-Yan processes of practical interest. Numerical calculations are presented which show, for any reasonable parametrisation of the parton densities, that the neglect of higher-order terms in α_s(Q²) is not justifiable. The quark-gluon diagrams on the other hand give small corrections in this order and are only important for PP scattering.