Speaker
Description
The measurement of the Drell-Yan (DY) production at forward rapidity in proton-proton (pp) collisions at the LHC with the upgraded ALICE detector in Run 3 provides a unique tool for probing the Parton Density Functions (PDFs) and partonic structure of hadrons and nuclei. There is a lack of a hard and clear probe of nuclear matter at relatively small Bjorken-x (down to 10^–5), which could provide information about initial stages in collisions involving heavy ions. In principle, the nuclear PDFs (nPDFs) are not well known for x < 10^–4. The low-mass DY dimuon (Mμ+μ– > 4 GeV/c^2) measurements at forward rapidity with the upgraded ALICE detector will allow us to gain knowledge about small-x physics at the LHC. These measurements in pp collisions will serve as a reference for the future proton-lead (p-Pb) data. Moreover, in p-Pb collisions, at very small x, the ratio of the nuclear modification factors (R_pPb) of DY and J/ψ can provide important constraints on gluon densities. In this contribution, the initial performance of the Drell-Yan simulations with the upgraded ALICE detector will be presented.
