Exclusive electroproduction of rhoT meson with twist three accuracy

Abstract

Exclusive electroproduction of vector mesons is a crucial way to probe QCD factorization properties. Such a factorization is up to now only proven, at the twist 2 level, for a longitudinaly polarized meson. It is crucial to extend our understanding to the case of transversely polarized vector mesons. As a first step in this direction, we evaluate the impact factor of the transition gamma* -> rhoT, which is the relevant part of the amplitude within the kt-factorization approach valid at large energies, taking into account the twist 3 contributions, coming both from quark antiquark and from quark antiquark gluon correlators. We show that a gauge invariant expression is obtained with the help of QCD equations of motion.