Measurement of exclusive production of scalar $\chi_{c0}$ meson in proton-(anti)proton collisions via $\chi_{c0} \to \pi^{+}\pi^{-}$ decay

TL;DR

This paper measures the exclusive production of the scalar $$ meson in proton-(anti)proton collisions, analyzing the process via its decay into pions, and evaluates the signal against background processes using advanced theoretical models.

Contribution

The study provides a detailed calculation of the $$ production amplitude using $k_t$-factorization and assesses experimental detection prospects considering background and kinematic effects.

Findings

Calculated differential distributions for the production process.

Quantified the background contribution from four-body reactions.

Analyzed the impact of kinematic cuts on signal detection.

Abstract

We consider a measurement of exclusive production of scalar $\chi_{c}(0^{++})$ meson in the proton-proton collisions at LHC and RHIC and in the proton-antiproton collisions at the Tevatron via $\chi_{c0} \to \pi^{+}\pi^{-}$ decay. The corresponding amplitude for exclusive double-diffractive $\chi_{c0}$ meson production was obtained within the $k_{t}$-factorization approach including virtualities of active gluons and the corresponding cross section is calculated with unintegrated gluon distribution functions (UGDFs) known from the literature. The four-body $p p \to p p \pi^+ \pi^-$ reaction constitutes an irreducible background to the exclusive $\chi_{c0}$ meson production. We calculate several differential distributions for $pp(\bar{p}) \to pp(\bar{p})\chi_{c0}$ process including absorptive corrections. The influence of kinematical cuts on the signal-to-background ratio is investigated. Corresponding experimental consequences are discussed.