Quark Initial State Interaction in Deep Inelastic Scattering and the Drell - Yan process ∗

We pursue a phenomenological study of higher twist effects in high energy processes by taking into account the off-shellness (virtuality) of partons bound in the nucleon. The effect of parton off-shellness in deep inelastic ep → eX scattering (DIS) and the Drell-Yan process (pp → l ¯ lX) is examined. Assuming factorization and a single-parameter Breit-Wigner form for the parton spectral function, we develop a model to calculate the corresponding off-shell cross sections. Allowing for a finite parton width ≈ 100 MeV, we reproduce the data of both DIS and the triple differential Drell-Yan cross section without an additional K-factor. The results are compared to those from perturbative QCD and the intrinsic-k T approach.