Abstract
We calculate cross sections and transverse momentum distributions for the incoherent diffractive production of vector mesons $J/\psi$ and $\Upsilon$ on heavy nuclei. In distinction to coherent diffraction, the nucleus is allowed to break up, but except for the vector meson no new particles are produced in the reaction. Within the color dipole approach, we derive the multiple scattering expansion of the incoherent diffractive cross section as an expansion over quasielastic scatterings of the color dipole. We also compare our results to the measurement of the ALICE collaboration for incoherent $J/\psi$ production at $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}} = 2.76 \, \rm {TeV}$ and show predictions at $\sqrt{s_{\rm NN}} = 5.02 \, \rm{TeV}$. We also briefly discuss a possible contribution to $J/\psi$ production in peripheral collisions in the $70 \div 90 \%$ centrality class.
Highlights
There has been recently renewed interest in the diffractive photoproduction of vector mesons on heavy nuclei, especially in connection with ultraperipheral heavy-ion collision at Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC); see, for example, the reviews in Refs. [1,2,3]
In distinction to coherent diffraction, the nucleus is allowed to break up, but except for the vector meson no new particles are produced in the reaction
To make the problem numerically more tractable, we start by assuming for the off-forward dipole cross section a factorized ansatz: σ (x,r,q) = σ (x,r) exp − 1 Bq2, (3.1)
Summary
There has been recently renewed interest in the diffractive photoproduction of vector mesons on heavy nuclei, especially in connection with ultraperipheral heavy-ion collision at Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and the Large Hadron Collider (LHC); see, for example, the reviews in Refs. [1,2,3]. The energy should be not too high, though: At some point, diffractive dissociation of hadrons becomes important and Glauber theory needs to be amended by introducing the so-called inelastic shadowing corrections [6]; a review can be found in Ref. We are interested in the production of vector mesons built of heavy quarks QQ (Q = charm or bottom) in the high-energy limit, where the formation time of the vector meson exceeds the nuclear size In this case, the appropriate framework is the color dipole approach, where QQstates of fixed transverse size r interact with the nucleus and play the role of eigenstates of the diffractive S matrix [12]. Recent works on coherent and incoherent vector meson production in the color dipole approach are presented in Refs. An approach implementing the Glauber-Gribov shadowing not based on color dipoles is found in Ref. [23]
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