Diffractive quarkonium production in association with a photon at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper estimates the rates of diffractive quarkonium plus photon production at the LHC using NRQCD, highlighting its potential to probe the gluon content of the Pomeron and test quarkonium production mechanisms.

Contribution

It provides the first estimates of diffractive quarkonium plus photon production cross sections at the LHC within the NRQCD framework, including absorptive corrections.

Findings

Cross sections are sensitive to the gluon content of the Pomeron.

Processes can test different quarkonium production mechanisms.

Results suggest measurable rates at the LHC.

Abstract

The rates for diffractive quarkonium plus prompt-photon associated production at the LHC are estimated. The theoretical framework considered in the J/Psi (or Upsilon) production associated with a direct photon at the hadron collider is the non-relativistic QCD (NRQCD) factorization formalism. The corresponding single diffractive cross section is computed based on the hard diffractive scattering factorization supplemented by absorptive corrections. Such processes are sensitive to the gluon content of the Pomeron at small Bjorken-x and they may also be a good place to test the different available mechanisms for quarkonium production at hadron colliders.