  We present a study of di-lepton production at the CERN Large Hadron Collider
with a particular focus on the contribution resulting from both real and
virtual photons in the initial state. We discuss the region of phase space in
which the invariant mass of the lepton pair is of the order of several TeV,
where searches for new physics phenomena yielding a di-lepton signature are
presently carried out. We study both the yield and associated uncertainties for
all possible topologies in photon-induced di-lepton production and compare
these with what is expected in the standard Drell-Yan channel, where
quark-antiquark pairs are responsible for the production of lepton pairs. We
analyse the impact of these QED contributions on the expected Standard Model
background and on searches for new physics. In this latter case, we use the
production of an extra heavy $Z^\prime$-boson predicted by the Sequential
Standard Model (SSM) as a benchmark process.
