Exclusive production of meson pairs and resonances in proton-proton collisions

Abstract

We report a study of the central exclusive production of $\pi^{+} \pi^{-}$ and $K^{+}K^{-}$ pairs in high energy hadron-hadron collisions. The amplitude is calculated in the Regge approach including both pomeron and secondary reggeon exchanges and absorption effects due to proton-proton interaction and $\pi\pi$ ($KK$) rescattering. We discuss a measurement of exclusive production of a scalar $\chi_{c0}$ meson via $\chi_{c0} \to \pi^{+} \pi^{-}$, $K^{+} K^{-}$ decay. We find that the relative contribution of resonance states and the $\pi\pi$ ($KK$) continuum strongly depend on the cut on pion (kaon) transverse momentum. We compare the results with the existing experimental data and present predictions for the RHIC, Tevatron and LHC colliders. We discuss also the $f_{2}(1270)$ meson production mediated by an effective tensor pomeron exchanges.