Nuclear shadowing in photoproduction of $rho$ mesons in ultraperipheral nucleus collisions at RHIC and the LHC

We argue that with an increase of the collision energy, elastic photoproduction of $rho$ mesons on nuclei becomes affected by the significant cross section of photon inelastic diffraction into large masses, which results in the sizable inelastic nuclear shadowing correction to $sigma_{gamma A to rho A}$ and the reduced effective $rho$-nucleon cross section. We take these effects into account by combining the vector meson dominance model, which we upgrade to include the contribution of high-mass fluctuations of the photon according to QCD constraints, and the Gribov-Glauber approximation for nuclear shadowing, where the inelastic nuclear shadowing is included by means of cross section fluctuations. The resulting approach allows us to successfully describe the data on elastic $rho$ photoproduction on nuclei in heavy ion UPCs in the $7 {rm GeV} < W_{gamma p} < 46$ GeV energy range and to predict the value of the cross section of coherent $rho$ photoproduction in Pb-Pb UPCs at $sqrt{s_{NN}}=5.02$ TeV in Run 2 at the LHC, $dsigma_{Pb Pb to rho Pb Pb} (y=0)/dy= 560 pm 25$ mb.

Disentangling coherent and incoherent quasielastic $J/psi$ photoproduction on nuclei by neutron tagging in ultraperipheral ion collisions at the LHC

We consider $J/psi$ photoproduction in ion--ion ultraperipheral collisions (UPCs) at the LHC and RHIC in the coherent and incoherent quasielastic channels with and without accompanying forward neutron emission and analyze the role of nuclear gluon shadowing at small $x$, $x=10^{-4}-10^{-2}$, in these processes. We find that despite the good agreement between large nuclear gluon shadowing and the ALICE data in the coherent channel, in the incoherent channel, the leading twist approximation predicts the amount of nuclear suppression which is by approximately a factor of $1.5$ exceeds that seen in the data. We hypothesize that part of the discrepancy can be accounted for by the incoherent inelastic process of $J/psi$ photoproduction with nucleon dissociation. To separate the high-photon-energy and low-photon-energy contributions to the $d sigma_{AAto AAJ/psi}(y)/dy$ cross section, we consider ion--ion UPCs accompanied by neutron emission due to electromagnetic excitation of one or both colliding nuclei. We describe the corresponding PHENIX data and make predictions for the LHC kinematics. In addition, in the incoherent quasielastic case, we show that the separation between the low-photon-energy and high-photon-energy contributions can be efficiently performed by measuring the correlation between the directions of $J/psi$ and the emitted neutrons.

Rapidity and momentum transfer distributions of coherent $J/psi$ photoproduction in ultraperipheral pPb collisions at the LHC

Based on accurate calculations of the flux of equivalent photons of the proton and heavy nuclei and the pQCD framework for the gluon distribution in the proton and nuclei, we analyze the rapidity and momentum transfer distributions of coherent $J/psi$ photoproduction in ultraperipheral proton-Pb collisions at the LHC. We demonstrate that unlike the case of proton-proton UPCs marred by certain theoretical uncertainties and experimental limitations, after a cut excluding the region of small momentum transfers, ultraperipheral proton-Pb collisions offer a clean way to study the gluon distribution in the proton down to $x approx 10^{-5}$. Our analysis of the momentum transfer distributions shows that an interplay of $J/psi$ production by low-energy photons on the nucleus and by high-energy photons on the proton in proton-Pb UPCs can result in some excess of events at small $p_t$ in a definite region of the rapidity y.

Exclusive J/{psi} production in ultraperipheral collisions at the LHC: constrains on the gluon distributions in the proton and nuclei

Using the framework of collinear factorization in perturbative QCD (pQCD), we analyze the recent data of the LHCb and ALICE collaborations on exclusive photoproduction of J/{psi} in ultraperipheral pp and AA collisions, respectively. We demonstrate that the simultaneous analysis of the proton and Pb data allows us to reduce the ambiguity of the pQCD description of the $gamma p to J/psi p$ and $gamma A to J/psi p$ cross sections and, hence, to place additional constraints on the gluon distributions in the nucleon and nuclei at small x. We also make predictions for the cross section of coherent exclusive photoproduction of J/{psi} in nucleus-nucleus ultraperipheral collisions accompanied by the electromagnetic excitation of nuclei and the subsequent neutron emission.

Leading twist nuclear shadowing phenomena in hard processes with nuclei

We present and discuss the theory and phenomenology of the leading twist theory of nuclear shadowing which is based on the combination of the generalization of the Gribov-Glauber theory, QCD factorization theorems, and the HERA QCD analysis of diffraction in lepton-proton deep inelastic scattering (DIS). We apply this technique for the analysis of a wide range of hard processes with nuclei---inclusive DIS on deuterons, medium-range and heavy nuclei, coherent and incoherent diffractive DIS with nuclei, and hard diffraction in proton-nucleus scattering---and make predictions for the effect of nuclear shadowing in the corresponding sea quark and gluon parton distributions. We also analyze the role of the leading twist nuclear shadowing in generalized parton distributions in nuclei and in certain characteristics of final states in nuclear DIS. We discuss the limits of applicability of the leading twist approximation for small x scattering off nuclei and the onset of the black disk regime and methods of detecting it. It will be possible to check many of our predictions in the near future in the studies of the ultraperipheral collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). Further checks will be possible in pA collisions at the LHC and forward hadron production at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC). Detailed tests will be possible at an Electron-Ion Collider (EIC) in the USA and at the Large Hadron-Electron Collider (LHeC) at CERN.

On the mistake in the implementation of the minimal model of the dual parameterization and resulting inability to describe the high-energy DVCS data

We correct the mistaken claim made in cite{Guzey:2005ec,Guzey:2006xi} that the minimal model of the dual parameterization of nucleon generalized parton distributions (GPDs) gives a good, essentially model-independent description of high-energy data on deeply virtual Compton scattering (DVCS). In the implementation of the dual parameterization in cite{Guzey:2005ec,Guzey:2006xi}, the numerical prefactor of two in front of the DVCS amplitude was missing. We show that the corrected minimal model of the dual parameterization significantly overestimates the HERA data (H1 and ZEUS) on the DVCS cross section.