We calculate the differential cross section and single-polarization
observables for the reaction γp→Φp within perturbative QCD,
treating the proton as a quark-diquark system. The phenomenological couplings
of gauge bosons to (spatially extended) diquarks and the quark-diquark
distribution amplitude of the proton are adopted from previous investigations
of baryon form factors and two-photon processes. Going beyond leading order, we
take into account hadron-mass effects by means of a systematic expansion in the
small parameter (hadron mass/ photon energy). With the Φ-meson
distribution amplitude taken from the literature our predictions for the
differential cross section at | t | \agt 4 \text{GeV}^2 seem to provide a
reasonable extrapolation of the low-t data and are also comparable in magnitude
with the results of a two-gluon exchange model in which the gluons are
considered as a remnant of the pomeron. For momentum transfers of a few GeV
hadron-mass effects appear still to be sizeable.Comment: 37 pages, 7 figures, uses RevTeX styl