Exclusive photoproduction of quarkonium in proton-nucleus collisions at energies available at the CERN Large Hadron Collider

Abstract

In this work we investigate the coherent photoproduction of ψ(1S), ψ(2S), and ϒ states in the proton-nucleus collisions in the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) energies. Predictions for the rapidity distributions are presented using the color dipole formalism and including saturation effects that are expected to be relevant at high energies. Calculations are done at the energy 5.02 TeV and also for the next LHC run at 8.8 TeV in proton-lead mode. Discussion is performed on the main theoretical uncertainties associated to the calculations.