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

Abstract

In this work we analyze the theoretical uncertainties on the predictions for the photoproduction of light vector mesons in coherent pp, pA, and AA collisions at the CERN Large Hadron Collider energies using the color dipole approach. In particular, we present our predictions for the rapidity distribution for ρ0 and ø 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 ρ0 at 2.76 TeV in PbPb collisions.