Photoproduction of heavy vector mesons in peripheral $PbPb$ collisions at the Large Hadron Collider

Abstract

A comprehensive analysis of the photoproduction of $J/\Psi$ and ${\rm Y}$ mesons in peripheral $PbPb$ collisions at the center - of - mass energies of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is performed, considering distinct assumptions for the modeling of the nuclear photon flux, photon - nucleus cross - section, overlap function and dipole - proton scattering amplitude. The comparison of these predictions with the ALICE data is also performed. Our results indicate that a detailed analysis of the production of both mesons will be very useful to improve the description of photon - induced processes in peripheral collisions.

26 pages, 8 figures, 9 tables. Improved version to be published in Physical Review D