Exclusive production of pion pairs with large invariant mass in nucleus-nucleus collisions

Abstract

The cross section for exclusive $\pi^+\pi^-$ and $\pi^0\pi^0$ meson pairs production in peripheral ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions is calculated at the energy available at the CERN Large Hadron Collider, i.e., $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=3.5$ TeV. The cross section for elementary $\gamma\gamma\to\pi\pi$ process is calculated with the help of the pQCD Brodsky-Lepage approach with the distribution amplitude used recently to describe the pion transition form factor measured by the BaBar Collaboration.