Central exclusive production of $\eta$ and ${\eta }^{\prime }$ mesons in diffractive proton-proton collisions at the LHC

Abstract

We discuss central exclusive production (CEP) of $\eta$ and ${\eta }^{\prime }(958)$ mesons in high-energy proton-proton collisions using the tensor-pomeron approach, incorporating absorption effects at the amplitude level. Model parameters are constrained using WA102 experimental data measured at $\sqrt{s}=29.1$ GeV. We present cross sections and differential distributions for the LHC energy of $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV. For $pp\to pp\eta$, the upper limit of the total cross section is 2.5 $\mu$b for $|{\eta }_M|<1$ and 5.6 $\mu$b for $2<{\eta }_M<5$. For $pp\to pp{\eta }^{\prime }$, the predicted cross sections are 0.3--0.7 $\mu$b and 0.9--2.1 $\mu$b in the respective pseudorapidity regions. These results demonstrate the feasibility of studying diffractive flavour singlet pseudoscalar meson production to probe the nature of the pomeron at the LHC.

arXiv comment7 pages, 5 figures. Proceedings of the 18th International Workshop on Meson Physics (MESON2026), Kraków, Poland, 2026 June 25-30