Contributor info: Prof. Antoni Szczurek

Rafał Maciuła, Victor P. Goncalves, Antoni Szczurek

SciPost Phys. Proc. 8, 124 (2022) · published 13 July 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

The predictions for the atmospheric neutrino flux at high energies strongly depend on the contribution of prompt neutrinos, which are determined by the production of charmed meson in the atmosphere at very forward rapidities. Here we estimate the related cross sections taking into account the presence of an intrinsic charm (IC) component in the proton wave function. The impact on the predictions for the prompt neutrino flux is investigated assuming different values for the probability to find the IC in the nucleon.

Piotr Lebiedowicz, Josef Leutgeb, Otto Nachtmann, Anton Rebhan, Antoni Szczurek

SciPost Phys. Proc. 8, 121 (2022) · published 13 July 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

Exclusive production of axial-vector $f_{1}(1285)$ meson in proton-proton collisions via pomeron-pomeron fusion within the tensor-pomeron approach is discussed. Two ways to construct the pomeron-pomeron-$f_{1}$ coupling are presented. We adjust the parameters of our model to the WA102 experimental data and compare with predictions of the Sakai-Sugimoto model. Predictions for LHC experiments are given.

Izabela Babiarz, Roman Pasechnik, Wolfgang Schäfer, Antoni Szczurek

SciPost Phys. Proc. 8, 118 (2022) · published 13 July 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

We study the exclusive production of $J^{PC}=0^{++}, 0^{--}$ charmonium states in proton-proton collisions at the LHC energies. The amplitudes for $g^*g^*→\chi_{c0}$ as well as for$ gg→\eta_c$ mechanisms are derived in the kT-factorization approach. The $pp \to pp\eta_c$ reaction is discussed for the first time. We observe a substantial contribution from the nonperturbative domain of gluon virtualities, especially for $\eta_c$ production. To model the nonperturbative region better, we utilize models of the unintegrated gluon distribution based on parametrizations of the color dipole cross-section.

Antoni Szczurek, Barbara Linek, Marta Luszczak

SciPost Phys. Proc. 8, 083 (2022) · published 12 July 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

We discuss photon-photon fusion mechanisms of dilepton production in proton-proton collisions with rapidity gap in the main detector and one forward proton in the forward proton detectors. This is relevant for the LHC measurements by ATLAS+AFP and CMS+PPS. Transverse momenta of the intermediate photons are taken into account and photon fluxes are expressed in terms of proton electromagnetic form factors and structure functions. Both double-elastic and single-dissociative processes are included in the analysis. Different parametrizations of the structure functions are used. Some differential distributions are presented. Some differences with respect to the results without proton measurement are discussed.

Wolfgang Schäfer, Izabela Babiarz, Roman Pasechnik, Antoni Szczurek

SciPost Phys. Proc. 8, 032 (2022) · published 11 July 2022 | Toggle abstract · pdf

We present a new approach for the prompt production of quarkonia which is based on the $k_T$-factorization method. The production of even C-parity quarkonia proceeds via the fusion of two (off-shell) gluons. Especially in the kinematics of the LHCb experiment these processes are thus expected to be a sensitive probe of the small-x gluon distribution. We calculate the relevant off-shell matrix elements in terms of the light-front wave functions of the quarkonium states. We present our results for scalar and pseudoscalar charmonia and discuss photon transition form factors as well as cross sections for prompt hadroproduction. We compare our results for the $\eta_c$ to recent LHCb data.