Diffractive photoproduction of radially excited ψ(2S) mesons in photon-Pomeron reactions in PbPb collisions at energies available at the CERN Large Hadron Collider

Abstract

In this work we investigate the photoproduction of radially excited vector mesons off nuclei in heavy ion relativistic collisions. In particular, we analyze the exclusive photoproduction of ψ(2S) off nuclei, evaluating the coherent and the incoherent contributions to that process. The theoretical framework used in the present analysis is the light-cone dipole formalism and predictions are done for PbPb collisions at the CERN Large Hadron Collider energy of 2.76 TeV. The theoretical uncertainties are analyzed and comparison is also done to the recent ALICE Collaboration data for the ψ(1S) state photoproduction.