It is reported on a global analysis of hard vector-meson electroproduction which is based on the handbag factorization. The generalized parton distributions are constructed from their forward limits with the help of double distributions and the partonic subprocesses are calculated within the modified perturbative approach.
In this talk various spin effects in hard exclusive electroproduction of mesons are briefly reviewed. The data are discussed in the light of recent theoretical calculations within the frame work of the handbag approach.
We discuss various aspects of vector meson production, first analysing the interplay between perturbative and nonperturbative aspects of the QCD calculation. Using a general method adapted to incorporate both perturbative and nonpertubative aspects, we show that nonperturbative effects are important for all experimentally available values of the photon virtuality Q2. We compare the huge amount of experimental information now available with our theoretical results obtained using a specific nonperturbative model without free parameters, showing that quite simple features are able to explain the data.
It is reported on an analysis of electroproduction of light mesons at small Bjorken-x within the handbag approach. The partonic subprocesses, meson electroproduction off quarks or gluons, are calculated within the modified perturbative approach in which quark transverse momenta are retained. The soft hadronic matrix elements, generalized parton distributions, are constructed by means of double distributions. The constraints from parton distributions and sum rules are taken into account. Various moments of these generalized parton distributions are compared to recent results from lattice gauge theories.
Recent results obtained at HERA on deeply virtual Compton scattering and exclusive vector meson production are reviewed, with the emphasis on the transition from soft to hard diffraction and on spin dynamics.
Due to multiple possible polarizations hard exclusive production of tensor mesons by virtual photons or in heavy meson decays offers interesting possibilities to study the helicity structure of the underlying short-distance process. Motivated by the first measurement of the transition form factor $gamma^*gamma to f_2(1270)$ at large momentum transfers by the BELLE collaboration we present an improved QCD analysis of this reaction in the framework of collinear factorization including contributions of twist-three quark-antiquark-gluon operators and an estimate of soft end-point corrections using light-cone sum rules. The results appear to be in a very good agreement with the data, in particular the predicted scaling behavior is reproduced in all cases.