Validity of the color dipole approximation for diffractive production of heavy quarkonium

Abstract

We study the diffractive photo- and leptoproductions of $J / \psi$ and $\psi '$ on the proton, and examine the validity of the small-size color dipole approximation to the production of radially excited heavy quarkonium. The dipole model predicts a small ratio of $\psi '$ to $J / \psi$ photoproduction cross sections, which does not agree with experimental data. We show that this discrepancy originates from a large transverse size of $\psi '$ which makes the convergence of the transverse size expansion questionable, and the calculation without the dipole approximation turns out to be consistent with the data. Productions of $\Upsilon '(2S,3S)$ are also discussed, and the dipole approximation is found to be reasonable for the $\Upsilon$-family.