Complete calculation of exclusive heavy vector meson production at next-to-leading order in the dipole picture

TL;DR

This paper presents a comprehensive next-to-leading order calculation for exclusive heavy vector meson production in deep inelastic scattering within the Color Glass Condensate framework, including relativistic and QCD corrections.

Contribution

It introduces the first combined NLO and relativistic correction calculations for transversely polarized heavy vector mesons, enabling more accurate phenomenological predictions.

Findings

Good agreement with experimental data for J/ψ and Υ production.

Demonstrates vector meson production constrains initial conditions for evolution equations.

Enhances understanding of nonperturbative effects in high-energy QCD.

Abstract

Exclusive production of transversely polarized heavy vector mesons in deep inelastic scattering at high energy is calculated at next-to-leading order accuracy in the Color Glass Condensate framework. In addition to the first QCD correction proportional to the strong coupling constant $\alpha_s$, we systematically also include the first relativistic correction proportional to the heavy quark velocity squared $v^2$. When combined with our previously published results for longitudinal vector meson production at next-to-leading order accuracy, these results make phenomenological calculations of heavy vector meson production possible at the order $\mathcal{O}(\alpha_s v^0, \alpha_s^0 v^2)$. When applied to $\mathrm{J}/\psi$ and $\Upsilon$ production at HERA and at the LHC, a good agreement between the next-to-leading order calculations and experimental data is found. Additionally, we demonstrate that vector meson production can provide additional constraints compared to structure function analyses when the nonperturbative initial condition for the Balitsky-Kovchegov evolution equation is extracted.