Hard diffractive quarkonium hadroproduction at high energies

Abstract

We present a study of heavy quarkonium production in hard diffractive processes by pomeron exchange for Tevatron and LHC energies. The numerical results are computed using a recent experimental determination of the diffractive parton density functions in the pomeron and these are corrected by unitarity corrections through the gap survival probability factor. We give predictions for single as well as central diffractive ratios. These processes are sensitive to the gluon content of the pomeron at small Bjorken variable x and may be particularly useful in studying small-xphysics. They may also be a good place to test the different available mechanisms for quarkonium production at hadron colliders.