Azimuthal correlations in diffractive scattering at the Electron-Ion Collider

TL;DR

This paper predicts azimuthal correlations in diffractive vector meson production at the EIC, highlighting their sensitivity to gluon distribution correlations and providing realistic models for future experiments.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed analysis of azimuthal correlations in diffractive scattering, emphasizing their dependence on gluon distributions and offering predictions for the EIC.

Findings

Correlations are sensitive to gluon distribution correlations.

Two approaches provide realistic predictions at EIC kinematics.

Identifies 'kinematical' and 'intrinsic' contributions to correlations.

Abstract

We calculate azimuthal correlations between the exclusively produced vector meson and the scattered electron in Deep Inelastic Scattering processes at the future Electron-Ion Collider (EIC). We identify "kinematical" and "intrinsic" contributions to these correlations, and show that the correlations are sensitive to the non-trivial correlations in the gluon distribution of the target. Realistic predictions at the EIC kinematics are provided using two different approaches to describe the dipole-proton interaction at relatively small $x$.