Exclusive $J/\psi$ and ${\rm Y}$ production in high energy $pp$ and $p$Pb collisions

Abstract

We present a formalism for determining the cross section for exclusive heavy vector meson production ($J/\psi ,{\rm Y}$) as a function of rapidity, in both high energy proton-proton and proton-heavy ion collisions, at next-to-leading order in QCD. We compare and contrast the production in $pp$ and $p$Pb collisions and show how data for these processes can give information on the low $x$ gluon distribution of the proton and heavy ions at a range of different scales.

Comments: 25 pages, 9 figures, 4 tables