Exclusive heavy vector meson electroproduction to NLO in collinear factorisation

TL;DR

This paper calculates the next-to-leading order (NLO) corrections for exclusive heavy vector meson electroproduction within collinear factorisation, extending the theoretical understanding of this process relevant for current and future colliders.

Contribution

It provides the first NLO computation of heavy vector meson electroproduction in collinear factorisation, including off-shell photon virtuality, applicable to various high-energy scattering experiments.

Findings

NLO corrections improve theoretical predictions for heavy meson production.

The work extends the phase space to include electroproduction kinematics.

Results are relevant for experiments at HERA, EIC, LHeC, and FCC.

Abstract

We compute the exclusive electroproduction, $\gamma^* p \rightarrow V p$, of heavy quarkonia $V$ to NLO in the collinear factorisation scheme, which has been formally proven for this process. The inclusion of an off-shell virtuality $Q^2$ carried by the photon extends the photoproduction phase space of the exclusive heavy quarkonia observable to electroproduction kinematics. This process is relevant for diffractive scattering at HERA and the upcoming EIC, as well as at the proposed LHeC and FCC.