Exclusive diffractive production of real photons and vector mesons in a factorized Regge-pole model with non-linear Pomeron trajectory

Abstract

Exclusive diffractive production of real photons and vector mesons in ep collisions has been studied at HERA in a wide kinematic range. Here we present and discuss a Regge-type model of real photon production (Deeply Virtual Compton Scattering), as well as production of vector mesons (VMP) treated on the same footing by using an extension of a factorized Regge-pole model proposed earlier. The model has been fitted to the HERA data. Despite the very small number of the free parameters, the model gives a satisfactory description of the experimental data, both for the total cross section as a function of the photon virtuality Q2 or the energy W in the center of mass of the gamma\star-p system, and the differential cross sections as a function of the squared four-momentum transfer t with fixed Q2 and W.Comment: 34 pages, 82 figures accepted by Physical Review