Paving the Way Towards Precision Physics in Saturation Studies Through Exclusive Diffractive Light Neutral Vector Meson Production

Abstract

We perform the first next-to-leading order computation of the ${\gamma }^{(\ast )}\to V$ ($\rho ,\varphi ,\omega$) impact factor in the QCD shockwave approach and in the most general kinematics. This paves the way to the very first quantitative study of high-energy nucleon and nucleus saturation beyond the leading order, in various processes to be measured in $ep$, $eA$, $pp$ and $pA$ collisions at existing and future colliders.

Comments: 7 pages, 1 figure