Measurement of exclusive production of scalar ${\chi }_{c0}$ meson in proton-(anti)proton collisions via ${\chi }_{c0}\to {\pi }^{+}{\pi }^{-}$ decay

Abstract

We consider a measurement of exclusive production of scalar ${\chi }_c(0^{++})$ meson in the proton-proton collisions at LHC and RHIC and in the proton-antiproton collisions at the Tevatron via ${\chi }_{c0}\to {\pi }^{+}{\pi }^{-}$ decay. The corresponding amplitude for exclusive double-diffractive ${\chi }_{c0}$ meson production was obtained within the $k_t$-factorization approach including virtualities of active gluons and the corresponding cross section is calculated with unintegrated gluon distribution functions (UGDFs) known from the literature. The four-body $pp\to pp{\pi }^{+}{\pi }^{-}$ reaction constitutes an irreducible background to the exclusive ${\chi }_{c0}$ meson production. We calculate several differential distributions for $pp(\bar{p})\to pp(\bar{p}){\chi }_{c0}$ process including absorptive corrections. The influence of kinematical cuts on the signal-to-background ratio is investigated. Corresponding experimental consequences are discussed.

Comments: 16 pages, 10 figures, 2 tables