Exclusive photoproduction of open heavy flavor meson pairs

Abstract

In this paper we argue that exclusive photoproduction of $D$-meson pairs can be used as a complementary tool for studies of the generalized parton distributions of the target. We analyzed the photoproduction of the pseudoscalar-vector pairs with net zero electric charge (e.g. $D^{\pm}D^{*\mp}$, $D^{0}\overline{D}^{*0}$, $D_{s}^{+}D_{s}^{*-}$) and found that it allows to study the chiral even GPDs in ERBL region. A unique feature of the suggested process is contribution of the gluon and just one of the light quark flavors. We made numerical estimates in the kinematics of the future Electron Ion Collider and found that numerically the production cross-section is reasonably large for experimental studies, thus justifying its viability as a complementary probe of GPDs.