Parton model versus color dipole formulation of the Drell-Yan process

In the kinematical region where the center of mass energy is much larger than all other scales, the Drell-Yan process can be formulated in the target rest frame in terms of the same color dipole cross section as low Bjorken-x deep inelastic scattering. Since the mechanisms for heavy dilepton production appear very different in the dipole approach and in the conventional parton model, one may wonder whether these two formulations really represent the same physics. We perform a comparison of numerical calculations in the color dipole approach with calculations in the next-to-leading order parton model. For proton-proton scattering, the results are very similar at low x_2 from fixed target to RHIC energies, confirming the close connection between these two very different approaches. We also compare the transverse momentum distributions of Drell-Yan dileptons predicted in both formulations. The range of applicability of the dipole formulation and the impact of future Drell-Yan data from RHIC for determining the color dipole cross section are discussed. A detailed derivation of the dipole formulation of the Drell-Yan process is also included.