Exclusive production of $\omega$ meson in proton-proton collisions at high energies

TL;DR

This paper calculates the cross sections and differential distributions for exclusive $$ meson production in proton-proton collisions at high energies, considering various mechanisms and providing predictions for RHIC, Tevatron, and LHC.

Contribution

It presents the first detailed calculations of differential distributions for $p p o p p $ reactions at high energies, including multiple production mechanisms and absorption effects.

Findings

Hadronic bremsstrahlung dominates at large rapidities.

Photon-pomeron contribution is negligible at low energies but significant at high energies.

Predictions are made for rapidity distributions at RHIC, Tevatron, and LHC.

Abstract

First we calculate cross section for the $\gamma p \to \omega p$ reaction from the threshold to very large energies. At low energies the pion exchange is the dominant mechanism. At large energies the experimental cross section can be well described within the $k_{t}$-factorization approach by adjusting light-quark constituent mass. Next we calculate differential distributions for the $p p \to p p \omega$ reaction at RHIC, Tevatron and LHC energies for the first time in the literature. We consider photon-pomeron (pomeron-photon), photon-pion (pion-photon) as well as diffractive hadronic bremsstrahlung mechanisms. The latter are included in the meson/reggeon exchange picture with parameters fixed from the known phenomenology. Interesting rapidity distributions are predicted. The hadronic bremsstrahlung contributions dominate at large (forward, backward) rapidities. At small energies the photon-pomeron contribution is negligible compared to the bremsstrahlung contributions. It could be, however, easily identified at large energies at midrapidities. Absorptions effects are included and discussed. Our predictions are ready for verification at RHIC and LHC.