Evidence of strong proton shape fluctuations from incoherent diffraction

Abstract

We show within the saturation framework that measurements of exclusive vector meson production at high energy provide evidence for strong geometric fluctuations of the proton. In comparison, the effect of saturation scale and color charge fluctuations is weak. This knowledge will allow detailed future measurements of the incoherent cross section to tightly constrain the fluctuating geometry of the proton as a function of the parton momentum fraction $x$.

Comments: 7 pages, 4 figures. v2: typos fixed and references added. To be published in PRL