Central production of lepton-antilepton pairs and heavy quark composite states in hadron diffractive collisions at ultrahigh energies

TL;DR

This paper investigates the central production of lepton pairs and heavy quark states in ultrahigh energy diffractive proton collisions, analyzing different models of hadron interaction growth to distinguish their energy behaviors.

Contribution

It introduces a modified K-matrix approach to calculate rescattering corrections and compares two hadron interaction models at ultrahigh energies.

Findings

Differences in energy dependence of diffractive production between models.

Potential to distinguish interaction modes based on production process behavior.

Enhanced understanding of hadron interactions at ultrahigh energies.

Abstract

Central production of lepton-lepton pairs ($e^+e^-$ and $\mu^+\mu^-$) and heavy quark composite states (charmonia and bottomonia) in diffractive proton collisions (proton momenta transferred ${|\bf q_\perp}|\sim m/\ln s$) are studied at ultrahigh energies ($\ln{s}>>1$), where $\sigma_{tot}(pp^\pm)\sim\ln^N s$ with $1\la N\la 2$. The $pp^\pm$-rescattering corrections, which are not small, are calculated in terms of the $K$-matrix approach modified for ultrahigh energies. Two versions of hadron interactions are considered in detail: the growth (i) $\sigma_{tot}(pp^\pm)\sim\ln^2 s$, $\sigma_{inel}(pp^\pm)\sim\ln^2 s$ within the black disk mode and (ii) $\sigma_{tot}(pp^\pm)\sim\ln^2 s$, $\sigma_{inel}(pp^\pm)\sim\ln s$ within the resonant disk mode. The energy behavior of the diffractive production processes differs strongly for these modes, thus giving a possibility to distinguish between the versions of the ultrahigh energy interactions.