Hard photoproduction of a diphoton with a large invariant mass

Abstract

The electromagnetic probe has proven to be a very efficient way to access the $3-$dimensional structure of the nucleon, particularly thanks to the exclusive Compton processes. We explore the hard photoproduction of a large invariant mass diphoton in the kinematical regime where the diphoton is nearly forward and its invariant mass is the hard scale enabling to factorize the scattering amplitude in terms of generalized parton distributions. This amplitude has a very peculiar and interesting analytic structure. We calculate unpolarized cross sections and the angular asymmetry triggered by a linearly polarized photon beam.