VECTOR MESON-HADRON COLLISIONS - LARGE INVARIANT MASS AND TRANSVERSE-MOMENTUM LEPTON PAIR PRODUCTION

In the framework of factorized perturbative QCD, higher twist mesonic binding effects in lepton pair production in vector meson-hadron collisions are investigated. A general expression for the higher twist contributions is derived. As an example, these contributions are calculated in the case of the rho meson-proton collision and comparisons are made to leading twist ones. It is shown that the higher twist contributions induced by a transversely polarized rho(T) meson are large for all values of the dilepton transverse momentum p(T) (2 GeV less than or equal to p(T) less than or equal to 6 GeV). In the kinematic regimes tau = Q(2)/S --> 1 or x(F) --> 1, the higher twist corrections induced by both rho(L) and rho(L) exceed considerably the leading ones. The Drell-Yan processes with dilepton rapidity y > 0 are especially preferable for the observation of these effects.