Soffer’s inequality and the transversely polarized Drell-Yan process at next-to-leading order

We check numerically if Soffer's inequality for quark distributions is preserved by next-to-leading order QCD evolution. Assuming that the inequality is saturated at a low hadronic scale, we estimate the maximal transverse double-spin asymmetry for Drell-Yan muon pair production to next-to-leading-order accuracy.