High-energy exclusive leptoproduction of vector mesons

Abstract

The physics of diffractive vector meson production in virtual photon nucleon scattering at NMC energies is reviewed. A particular attention is paid to the physical aspects of the reaction and how they influence the observables. The reaction is a good probe to investigate both soft exchange mechanisms and hadronic wave functions. Extension to either HERA or ELFE kinematics is sketched out.

Comments: Contribution to the workshop "ELFE at DESY" (St-Malo, Sep. 96), 15 pages, LaTeX file, 8 figures, uses epsf