MASSIVE LEPTON PAIRS AS A PROMPT PHOTON SURROGATE - ART. NO. 074012

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 quan tum chromodynamics. For values of the transverse momentum Q(T) greater than roughly half the pair mass Q, Q(T) >Q/2, we show that the differ ential cross section is dominated by subprocesses initiated by inciden t gluons. Massive lepton-pair differential cross sections are an advan tageous source of constraints on the gluon density, free from the expe rimental 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 funct ion of Q(T) in proton-antiproton reactions at center-of-mass energies of 1.8 TeV, and in proton-nucleon reactions at fixed target and CERN L HC energies. [S0556-2821(98)02219-X].