Central exclusive meson pair production in the perturbative regime at hadron colliders.

Harland-Lang, L.A.; Khoze, V.A.; Ryskin, M.G.; Stirling, W.J.

Abstract

The central exclusive production (CEP) of heavy resonance states that subsequently decay into meson pairs, MM¯¯¯¯¯MM¯ , is an important signature for such processes at hadron colliders. However, there is a potentially important background from the direct QCD production of meson pairs, as mediated for example by the exclusive gg→MM¯¯¯¯¯gg→MM¯ hard scattering subprocess. This is in fact an interesting process in its own right, testing novel aspects of perturbative QCD technology. We explicitly calculate the gg→MM¯¯¯¯¯gg→MM¯ helicity amplitudes for different meson states within the hard exclusive formalism, and comment on the application of MHV techniques to the calculation. Using these results, we describe how meson pair CEP can be calculated in the perturbative regime, and present some sample numerical predictions for a variety of final states. We also briefly consider the dominant non-perturbative contributions, which are expected to be important when the meson transverse momentum is small.

Citation

Harland-Lang, L., Khoze, V., Ryskin, M., & Stirling, W. (2011). Central exclusive meson pair production in the perturbative regime at hadron colliders. The European Physical Journal C, 71, Article 1714. https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-011-1714-2

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Online Publication Date: Aug 2, 2011
• Publication Date: 2011-08
• Deposit Date: Jan 23, 2012
• Journal: European Physical Journal C: Particles and Fields
• Print ISSN: 1434-6044
• Electronic ISSN: 1434-6052
• Publisher: SpringerOpen
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 71
• Article Number: 1714
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-011-1714-2