Exclusive Vector Photoproduction: Confirmation of Regge Theory

TL;DR

This paper confirms Regge theory's applicability to exclusive vector meson photoproduction, showing that classical soft pomeron exchange explains small-t data, and a hard pomeron component improves fits at larger t values.

Contribution

It demonstrates that combining soft and hard pomeron exchanges provides a comprehensive description of exclusive vector meson photoproduction data.

Findings

Soft pomeron exchange explains small-t data.

Adding a hard pomeron improves fits at larger t.

Model successfully describes rho and phi photoproduction.

Abstract

Recent small-t ZEUS data for exclusive rho photoproduction are in excellent agreement with exchange of the classical soft pomeron with slope alpha'=0.25 GeV^{-2}. Adding in a flavour-blind hard-pomeron contribution, whose magnitude is calculated from the data for exclusive J/psi photoproduction, gives a good fit also to the ZEUS data for rho photoproduction at larger values of t, and to phi photoproduction.