Probing the structure of X(3872) in photoproduction

Abstract

We study the production of X(3872) mesons in photon-induced nuclear reactions near the threshold within the collision model based on the nuclear spectral function. The model accounts for direct photon-nucleon X(3872) production processes as well as five different scenarios for their internal structure. We calculate the absolute and relative excitation functions for X(3872) production off 12C and 184W target nuclei at near-threshold incident photon energies of 8–16 GeV, the absolute differential cross sections for their production off these target nuclei at laboratory angles of 0∘–10∘ and for incident photon energy of 13 GeV as well as the A dependences of the relative (transparency ratios) cross sections for X(3872) production from γA collisions at photon energies around 13 GeV within the adopted scenarios for the X(3872) meson internal structure. We show that the absolute and relative observables considered reveal distinct sensitivity to these scenarios. Therefore, the measurement of such observables in a dedicated experiment at the CEBAF facility in the near-threshold energy range will allow us to get valuable information on the X(3872) inner structure.