Exclusive coherent production of heavy vector mesons in nucleus-nucleus collisions at LHC

TL;DR

This paper investigates the coherent production of heavy vector mesons in nucleus-nucleus collisions at LHC, using photon flux from heavy nuclei to probe the nuclear gluon distribution in the saturation regime.

Contribution

It provides theoretical predictions for rapidity distributions of exclusive J/Psi and Upsilon mesons, linking photon-nucleus interactions to the nuclear unintegrated gluon distribution.

Findings

Predicted rapidity distributions for J/Psi and Upsilon production

Proposed measurements to probe nuclear gluon saturation

Enhanced understanding of photon-induced interactions at LHC

Abstract

Heavy nuclei at collider energies are a source of high energy Weizsaecker-Williams photons. This photon flux may be utilized to study high energy photon-nucleus interactions. Here we concentrate on the coherent diffractive production of heavy vector mesons on nuclear targets and show how it probes the unintegrated glue of the nucleus in the saturation domain. We present predictions for rapidity distributions of exclusive coherent J/Psi and Upsilon mesons which can be measured by the ALICE experiment at the LHC.