Diffractive charged meson pair production

TL;DR

This paper explores measuring the nonforward gluon distribution function through diffractive production of charged meson pairs in polarized lepton-nucleon scattering, highlighting the potential for large spin asymmetries despite small cross sections.

Contribution

It introduces a method to probe gluon distributions using diffractive meson pair production and predicts significant spin asymmetries in polarized scattering.

Findings

Cross sections are small but dominated by gluonic contributions.

Relatively large spin asymmetries are predicted for meson pairs.

Potential to measure gluon distributions in nucleons.

Abstract

We investigate the possibility to measure the nonforward gluon distribution function by means of diffractively produced \pi^+\pi^- and K^+K^- pairs in polarized lepton nucleon scattering. The resulting cross sections are small and are dominated by the gluonic contribution. We find relatively large spin asymmetries, both for \pi^+\pi^- and for K^+K^- pairs.