An increased precision of HERA data allows studies of exclusive processes in their transition from soft to hard interactions as well as in the pQCD domain. The recent measurements of vector meson production and Deeply Virtual Compton Scattering (DVCS) performed by the H1 and ZEUS experiments are reported and compared to pQCD expectations.
The exclusive diffractive production of vector mesons and real photons in ep collisions has been studied at HERA in a wide kinematic range. Here the most recent experimental results are presented together with a Regge-type model and projects for new diffractive studies at LHC.
We present a review of the latest exclusive diffraction results achieved at HERA, discussing in particular the $W$ and $t$ dependence of the measured cross-sections in both DIS and photo-production regimes.
A first measurement is presented of exclusive photoproduction of $ρ^0$ mesons associated with leading neutrons at HERA. The data were taken with the H1 detector in the years $2006$ and $2007$ at a centre-of-mass energy of $\sqrt{s}=319$ GeV and correspond to an integrated luminosity of $1.16$ pb$^{-1}$. The $ρ^0$ mesons with transverse momenta $p_T<1$ GeV are reconstructed from their decays to charged pions, while leading neutrons carrying a large fraction of the incoming proton momentum, $x_L>0.35$, are detected in the Forward Neutron Calorimeter. The phase space of the measurement is defined…
A first measurement is presented of exclusive photoproduction of $ρ^0$ mesons associated with leading neutrons at HERA. The data were taken with the H1 detector in the years 2006 and 2007 at a centre-of-mass energy of 319 GeV and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 1.16/pb. The $ρ^0$ mesons with transverse momenta $p_T<1$ GeV are reconstructed from their decays to charged pions, while leading neutrons carrying a large fraction of the incoming proton momentum, $x_L>$0.35, are detected in the Forward Neutron Calorimeter having a polar angular acceptance < 0.75 mrad. Single- and double-diff…
The exclusive deep inelastic electroproduction of $ψ(2S)$ and $J/ψ(1S)$ at an $ep$ centre-of-mass energy of 317 GeV has been studied with the ZEUS detector at HERA in the kinematic range $2 < Q^2 < 80$ GeV$^2$, $30 < W < 210$ GeV and $|t| < 1$ GeV$^2$, where $Q^2$ is the photon virtuality, $W$ is the photon-proton centre-of-mass energy and $t$ is the squared four-momentum transfer at the proton vertex. The data for $2 < Q^2 < 5$ GeV$^2$ were taken in the HERA I running period and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 114 pb$^{-1}$. The data for $5 < Q^2 < 80$ GeV$^2$ are from both HERA I a…
The exclusive deep inelastic electroproduction of $ψ(2S)$ and $J/ψ(1S)$ at an $ep$ centre-of-mass energy of 317 GeV has been studied with the ZEUS detector at HERA in the kinematic range $2 < Q^2 < 80$ GeV$^2$, $30 < W < 210$ GeV and $|t| < 1$ GeV$^2$, where $Q^2$ is the photon virtuality, $W$ is the photon-proton centre-of-mass energy and $t$ is the squared four-momentum transfer at the proton vertex. The data for $2 < Q^2 < 5$ GeV$^2$ were taken in the HERA I running period and correspond to an integrated luminosity of 114 pb$^{-1}$. The data for $5 < Q^2 < 80$ GeV$^2$ are from both HERA I a…
Recent results from the ep (electron-proton) collider HERA are presented. Jet production and diffraction type reactions allow tests of predictions of Quantum Chromodynamics (QCD). Jet measurements are used to improve the combined H1-ZEUS parton density fits by adding an additional constraint on the gluon distribution in the proton and, at the same time, providing information on strong coupling constant. Measurements of inclusive diffraction and diffractive dijet data are discussed in the context of factorisation in diffraction. Diffractive Upsilon(1S) production was studied to extract the t-sl…
A first measurement is presented of exclusive photoproduction of $ρ^0$ mesons associated with leading neutrons at HERA. The data were taken with the H1 detector in the years $2006$ and $2007$ at a centre-of-mass energy of $\sqrt{s}=319$ GeV and correspond to an integrated luminosity of $1.16$ pb$^{-1}$. The $ρ^0$ mesons with transverse momenta $p_T<1$ GeV are reconstructed from their decays to charged pions, while leading neutrons carrying a large fraction of the incoming proton momentum, $x_L>0.35$, are detected in the Forward Neutron Calorimeter. The phase space of the measurement is defined…
In this paper we extend the color dipole formalism to the study of exclusive processes associated with a leading neutron in $ep$ collisions at high energies. The exclusive $ρ$, $ϕ$ and $J/Ψ$ production, as well as the Deeply Virtual Compton Scattering, are analysed assuming a diffractive interaction between the color dipole and the pion emitted by the incident proton. We compare our predictions with the HERA data on $ρ$ production and estimate the magnitude of the absorption corrections. We show that the color dipole formalism is able to describe the current data. Finally, we present our estim…
The analysis of events containing multiple high Pt leptons (electrons and muons) produced in ep collisions has been performed with the H1 and ZEUS detectors at HERA, using the full data sets collected by the experiments in the period 1994-2007. Mutually exclusive event topologies containing at least two charged leptons are analysed. The H1 and ZEUS data, corresponding to a total integrated luminosity of about 1 fb^-1, are combined in a common phase space. The observed event yields are compared to the predictions from the Standard Model. In general a good agreement is found, where the expectati…
Exclusive photoproduction of $ρ^0(770)$ mesons is studied using the H1 detector at the $ep$ collider HERA. A sample of about 900000 events is used to measure single- and double-differential cross sections for the reaction $γp \to π^{+}π^{-}Y$. Reactions where the proton stays intact (${m_Y{=}m_p}$) are statistically separated from those where the proton dissociates to a low-mass hadronic system ($m_p{<}m_Y{<}10$ GeV). The double-differential cross sections are measured as a function of the invariant mass $m_{ππ}$ of the decay pions and the squared $4$-momentum transfer $t$ at the proton vertex…
Production of exclusive dijets in diffractive deep inelastic $e^\pm p$ scattering has been measured with the ZEUS detector at HERA using an integrated luminosity of 372 pb$^{-1}$. The measurement was performed for $γ^*-p$ centre-of-mass energies in the range $90 < W < 250$ GeV and for photon virtualities $Q^2 > 25$ GeV$^2$. Energy and transverse-energy flows around the jet axis are presented. The cross section is presented as a function of $β$ and $ϕ$, where $β=x/x_{\rm I\!P}$, $x$ is the Bjorken variable and $x_{\rm I\!P}$ is the proton fractional longitudinal momentum loss. The angle $ϕ$ is …
The exclusive photoproduction reactions $γp \to J/ψ(1S) p$ and $γp \to ψ(2S) p$ have been measured at an $ep$ centre-of-mass energy of 318 GeV with the ZEUS detector at HERA using an integrated luminosity of 373 pb$^{-1}$. The measurement was made in the kinematic range $30 < W < 180$ GeV, $Q^2 < 1$ GeV$^2$ and $|t| < 1$ GeV$^2$, where $W$ is the photon--proton centre-of-mass energy, $Q^2$ is the photon virtuality and $t$ is the squared four-momentum transfer at the proton vertex. The decay channels used were $J/ψ(1S) \to μ^+ μ^-$, $ψ(2S) \to μ^+ μ^-$ and $ψ(2S) \to J/ψ(1S) π^+ π^-$ with subse…
We systematically study exclusive diffractive (photo) production of vector mesons ($J/ψ$, $ψ(2s)$, $ϕ$ and $ρ$) off protons in high-energy collisions and investigate whether the production is a sensitive probe of gluon saturation. We confront saturation-based results for diffractive $ψ(2s)$ and $ρ$ production at HERA and $J/ψ$ photoproduction with all available data including recent ones from HERA, ALICE and LHCb, finding good agreement. In particular, we show that the $t$-distribution of differential cross sections of photoproduction of vector mesons offers a unique opportunity to discriminat…
The Impact-Parameter dependent Color Glass Condensate (b-CGC) dipole model is based on the Balitsky-Kovchegov non-linear evolution equation and improves the Iancu-Itakura-Munier dipole model by incorporating the impact-parameter dependence of the saturation scale. Here we confront the model to the recently released high precision combined HERA data and obtain its parameters. The b-CGC results are then compared to data at small-x for the structure function, the longitudinal structure function, the charm structure function, exclusive vector meson (J/ψ, ϕ, ρ) production and Deeply Virtual Compton…
The electron-proton collisions collected by the H1 and ZEUS experiments at HERA comprise a unique particle physics data set, and a comprehensive range of measurements has been performed to provide new insight into the structure of the proton. The high centre of mass energy at HERA has also allowed rare processes to be studied, including the production of W and Z bosons and events with multiple leptons in the final state. The data have also opened up a new domain to searches for physics beyond the Standard Model including contact interactions, leptoquarks, excited fermions and a number of super…
A QCD fit analysis to the combined HERA inclusive deep inelastic cross sections measured by the H1 and ZEUS collaborations for $e^\pm p$ scattering to extract HERAPDF sets is presented. The results are used for predictions of $ p\bar{p}$ processes at Tevatron and $pp$ processes at the LHC. The QCD analysis has been extended to include the combined HERA II measurements at high $Q^2$ resulting in the HERAPDF1.5 sets, with full estimation of uncertainties. The precision of the new PDFs at high $x$ is considerably improved, particularly in the valence sector. In addition, inclusion of the HERA jet…
Signals of QCD instanton-induced processes are searched for in neutral current deep-inelastic scattering at the electron-proton collider HERA in the kinematic region defined by the Bjorken-scaling variable $x > 10^{-3}$, the inelasticity $0.2< y < 0.7$ and the photon virtuality $150 < Q^2 < 15000$ GeV$^2$. The search is performed using H1 data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of ~$351$ pb$^{-1}$. No evidence for the production of QCD instanton-induced events is observed. Upper limits on the cross section for instanton-induced processes between $1.5$~pb and $6$~pb, at $95\%$~ confidenc…
In this paper we study leading neutron production in photon - hadron interactions which take place in $pp$ and $pA$ collisions at large impact parameters. Using a model that describes the recent leading neutron data at HERA, we consider exclusive vector meson production in association with a leading neutron in $pp/pA$ collisions at RHIC and LHC energies. The total cross sections and rapidity distributions of $ρ$, $ϕ$ and $J/Ψ$ produced together with a leading neutron are computed. Our results indicate that the study of these processes is feasible and that it can be used to improve the understa…
In this letter we update our predictions for exclusive $J/Ψ$ and $Υ$ photoproduction in proton-proton and nucleus - nucleus collisions at the Run 2 LHC energies obtained with the color dipole formalism and considering the impact parameter Color Glass Condensate model (bCGC) for the forward dipole - target scattering amplitude. A comparison with the LHCb data on rapidity distributions and photon - hadron cross sections is presented. Our results demonstrate that the current data can be quite well described by the bCGC model, which takes into account nonlinear effects in the QCD dynamics and repr…
