Vector meson electroproduction at next-to-leading order

Abstract

The process of a light neutral vector meson electroproduction is studied in the framework of QCD factorization in which the amplitude factorizes in a convolution of the nonperturbative meson distribution amplitude and the generalized parton densities with the perturbatively calculable hard-scattering amplitudes. We derive a complete set of hard-scattering amplitudes at next-to-leading order for the production of vector mesons, $V=\rho^0, \omega, \phi$.