Diffractive photoproduction of vector mesons at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper compares saturation-based models with experimental data on vector meson photoproduction at HERA and LHC, highlighting how the $t$-distribution can distinguish between saturation and non-saturation models, and provides predictions for future experiments.

Contribution

It demonstrates the discriminative power of the $t$-distribution in identifying saturation effects and offers detailed predictions for vector meson production at current and future colliders.

Findings

Good agreement between saturation models and existing data.

Distinct dip structures in $t$-distributions indicative of saturation effects.

Predictions for vector meson production ratios at various colliders.

Abstract

We confront saturation-based results for diffractive $\psi(2s)$ and $\rho$ production at HERA and $J/\psi$ photoproduction with all available data including recent ones from HERA, ALICE and LHCb, finding a good agreement. We show that the $t$-distribution of differential cross-section of photoproduction of vector mesons offers a unique opportunity to discriminate among saturation and non-saturation models. This is due to emergence of a pronounced dip (or multiple dips) in the $t$-distribution of diffractive photoproduction of vector mesons at relatively large, but potentially accessible $|t|$ that can be traced back to the unitarity features of colour dipole amplitude in the saturation regime. We provide various predictions for exclusive (photo)-production of different vector mesons including the ratio of $\psi(2s)/J/\psi$ at HERA, the LHC and at future colliders.