Massive Lepton-Pair Production in Hadron-Hadron Collisions at High Energies

On the basis of a parton model studied earlier we consider the production process of large-mass lepton pairs from hadron-hadron inelastic collisions in the limiting region, s→∞, Q²s finite, Q² and s being the squared invariant masses of the lepton pair and the two initial hadrons, respectively. General scaling properties and connections with deep inelastic electron scattering are discussed. In particular, a rapidly decreasing cross section as Q²s→1 is predicted as a consequence of the observed rapid falloff of the inelastic scattering structure function νW₂ near threshold.