Central exclusive production of scalar and pseudoscalar charmonia in the light-front kT -factorization approach

Summary, in English

We study exclusive production of scalar χc0χc(0++) and pseudoscalar ηc charmonia states in proton-proton collisions at the LHC energies. The amplitudes for gg→χc0 as well as for gg→ηc mechanisms are derived in the kT-factorization approach. The pp→ppηc reaction is discussed for the first time. We have calculated rapidity, transverse momentum distributions, and such correlation observables as the distribution in relative azimuthal angle and (t1,t2) distributions. The latter two observables are very different for χc0 and ηc cases. In contrast to the inclusive production of these mesons considered very recently in the literature, in the exclusive case, the cross section for ηc is much lower than that for χc0, which is due to a special interplay of the corresponding vertices and off-diagonal unintegrated gluon distributions used to calculate the cross sections. We present the numerical results for the key observables in the framework of potential models for the light-front quarkonia wave functions. We also discuss how different the absorptive corrections are for both considered cases.