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Published: 1999

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The authors calculate the transverse momentum distribution for the production of massive lepton-pairs in longitudinally polarized, proton-proton collider energies within the context of perturbative quantum chromodynamics. For values of the transverse momentum Q{sub {Tau}} greater than roughly half the pair mass Q, Q{sub {Tau}}> Q/2, they show that the differential cross section is dominated by subprocesses initiated by incident gluons, provided that the polarized gluon density is not too small. Massive lepton-pair differential cross sections should be a good source of independent constraints on the polarized gluon density, free from the experimental and theoretical complications of photon isolation that beset studies of prompt photon production. They provide predictions for the spin-averaged and spin-dependent differential cross sections as a function of Q{sub {Tau}} at energies relevant for the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven, and they compare these with predictions for real prompt photon production.