Paving the Way Towards Precision Physics in Saturation Studies Through Exclusive Diffractive Light Neutral Vector Meson Production

TL;DR

This paper presents the first next-to-leading order calculation of the impact factor for exclusive diffractive light neutral vector meson production, enabling more precise studies of saturation phenomena in high-energy QCD processes.

Contribution

It introduces a comprehensive NLO computation of the impact factor in the QCD shockwave framework, advancing the theoretical tools for saturation studies beyond leading order.

Findings

First NLO impact factor calculation in the shockwave approach

Enables quantitative analysis of saturation in various high-energy processes

Applicable to current and future collider experiments

Abstract

We perform the first next-to-leading order computation of the $\gamma^{(*)} \to V$ ($\rho, \phi, \omega$) impact factor in the QCD shockwave approach and in the most general kinematics. This paves the way to the very first quantitative study of high-energy nucleon and nucleus saturation beyond the leading order, in various processes to be measured in $ep$, $eA$, $pp$ and $pA$ collisions at existing and future colliders.