Light vector meson photoproduction in hadron-hadron and nucleus-nucleus collisions at energies available at the CERN Large Hadron Collider

G. Sampaio dos Santos and M. V. T. Machado

Phys. Rev. C 91, 025203 – Published 5 February 2015

Abstract

In this work we analyze the theoretical uncertainties on the predictions for the photoproduction of light vector mesons in coherent $p p$ , $p A$ , and $A A$ collisions at the CERN Large Hadron Collider energies using the color dipole approach. In particular, we present our predictions for the rapidity distribution for $ρ^{0}$ and $ϕ$ photoproduction and perform an analysis on the uncertainties associated to the choice of vector meson wave function and the phenomenological models for the dipole cross section. Comparison is done with the recent ALICE analysis on coherent production of $ρ^{0}$ at 2.76 TeV in PbPb collisions.