Light vector meson photoproduction in hadron-hadron and nucleus-nucleus collisions at the energies available at the CERN Large Hadron Collider

TL;DR

This paper analyzes theoretical uncertainties in predicting light vector meson photoproduction in hadron-hadron and nucleus-nucleus collisions at LHC energies using the color dipole approach, comparing predictions with ALICE data.

Contribution

It provides detailed predictions for rapidity distributions of rho0 and phi mesons and assesses uncertainties from wavefunction and dipole cross section models.

Findings

Predictions for rho0 and phi photoproduction at LHC energies.

Uncertainty analysis of wavefunction and dipole model choices.

Comparison with ALICE experimental results.

Abstract

In this work we analyse the theoretical uncertainties on the predictions for the photoproduction of light vector mesons in coherent pp, pA and AA collisions at the LHC energies using the color dipole approach. In particular, we present our predictions for the rapidity distribution for rh0 and phi photoproduction and perform an analysis on the uncertainties associated to the choice of vector meson wavefunctionand the phenomenological models for the dipole cross section. Comparison is done with the recent ALICE analysis on coherent production of rho at 2.76 TeV in PbPb collisions.