# Investigating the impact of the gluon saturation effects on the momentum transfer distributions for the exclusive vector meson photoproduction in hadronic collisions

## TL;DR

This paper analyzes how gluon saturation effects influence the momentum transfer distributions in exclusive vector meson photoproduction during hadronic collisions, providing insights into the gluonic structure of hadrons at high energies.

## Contribution

It offers a comprehensive analysis of the $t$-spectrum in exclusive vector meson photoproduction, incorporating gluon saturation effects and comparing with linear QCD predictions.

## Key findings

- Gluon saturation suppresses the cross section magnitude.
- Saturation shifts the dip positions to smaller $t$ values.
- Results differentiate saturation effects from linear QCD models.

## Abstract

The exclusive vector meson production cross section is one of the most promising observables to probe the high energy regime of the QCD dynamics. In particular, the squared momentum transfer ($t$) distributions are an important source of information about the spatial distribution of the gluons in the hadron and about fluctuations of the color fields. In this paper we complement previous studies on exclusive vector meson photoproduction in hadronic collisions presenting a comprehensive analysis of the $t$ - spectrum measured in exclusive $\rho$, $\phi$ and $J/\Psi$ photoproduction in $pp$ and $PbPb$ collisions at the LHC. We compute the differential cross sections taking into account gluon saturation effects and compare the predictions with those obtained in the linear regime of the QCD dynamics. Our results show that gluon saturation suppresses the magnitude of the cross sections and shifts the position of the dips towards smaller values of $t$.