Ultra-peripheral nuclear collisions as a source of heavy quarkonia

Abstract

Heavy quarkonium production in ultra-peripheral nuclear collisions (UPC) is described within the QCD dipole formalism. Realistic quarkonium wave functions in the $Q\bar{Q}$ rest frame are calculated by solving the Schrödinger equation with a subsequent Lorentz boost to high energy. We rely on several realistic $Q\bar{Q}$ potentials, which allow to describe well the quarkonium masses and decay widths, as well as data on diffractive electroproduction of quarkonia on protons. Nuclear effects are calculated with the phenomenological dipole cross sections fitted to DIS data. The higher twist quark shadowing related to the lowest $Q\bar{Q}$ Fock component of the photon, as well as the leading twist gluon shadowing, related to higher components containing gluons, are included. The results for coherent and incoherent photoproduction of charmonia and bottomonia in UPC of heavy nuclei are in good accord with available data from the LHC. They can also be verified in future experiments at electron-ion colliders.

Comments: 14 pages including 6 figures. The title has been changed. Considerable modification and improvement of the text. Some typos and misprints have been removed. The version for submission to Physical Review D