Measurement of diffractive photoproduction of vector mesons at large momentum transfer at HERA

Abstract

Elastic and proton-dissociative photoproduction of rho /sup 0/, phi and J/ psi vector mesons ( gamma p to Vp, gamma p to VN, respectively) have been measured in e/sup +/p interactions at HERA up to -t=3 GeV/sup 2/, where t is the four-momentum transfer squared at the photon-vector-meson vertex. The analysis is based on a data sample in which photoproduction reactions were tagged by detection of the scattered positron in a special-purpose calorimeter. This limits the photon virtuality, Q/sup 2/, to values less than 0.01 GeV/sup 2/, and selects a gamma p average center-of-mass energy of [W]=94 GeV. Results for the differential cross sections, d sigma /dt, for rho /sup 0/, phi and J/ psi mesons are presented and compared to the results of recent QCD calculations. Results are also presented for the t-dependence of the pion-pair invariant-mass distribution in the rho /sup 0/ mass region and of the spin-density matrix elements determined from the decay-angle distributions. The Pomeron trajectory has been derived from measurements of the W dependence of the elastic differential cross sections d sigma /dt for both rho /sup 0/ and phi mesons