POWER CORRECTIONS AND RENORMALONS IN DRELL-YAN PRODUCTION

The resummed Drell-Yan cross section in the double-logarithmic approximation suffers from infrared renormalons. Their presence was interpreted as an indication for non-perturbative corrections of order Lambda(QCD)/(Q(1 - z)). We find that, once soft gluon emission is accurately taken into account, the leading renormalon divergence is cancelled by higher-order perturbative contributions in the exponent of the resummed cross section. From this evidence, ''higher twist'' corrections to the hard cross section in Drell-Yan production should intervene only at order Lambda(QCD)(2)/(Q(2)(1 - z)(2)) in the entire perturbative domain Q(1 - z) > Lambda(QCD). We compare this result with hadronic event shape variables, comment on the potential universality of non-perturbative corrections to resummed cross sections, and on possible implications for phenomenology.