Constraints for the nuclear sea quark distributions from the Drell–Yan process at the SPS

Abstract. Nuclear modifications to the Drell–Yan dilepton production cross sections in $p+A$ and $A+A$ collisions in the leading twist approximation are caused by nuclear effects in the parton distributions of bound nucleons. For non-isoscalar nuclei, isospin corrections must also be considered. We calculate these effects for $p+A$ and Pb+Pb collisions at CERN SPS energies. Our goal is to place constraints on nuclear effects in sea quark distributions in the region $x\gsim 0.2$. We show that the net nuclear corrections remain small for $p+A$ collisions at $E_{\mathrm{lab}}=450$ GeV. However, in ${\mathrm{Pb+Pb}}$ collisions at $E_ {\mathrm{lab}}=158 A$GeV, effects of $\gsim 20\%$ are predicted at large M. The data collected by the NA50 collaboration could thus be used to constrain the nuclear effects in the sea quark distributions in the region of the EMC effect, $x\gsim 0.3$.