Vector Meson Production in Ultraperipheral Heavy Ion Collisions

Abstract

The ultraperipheral heavy ion collisions (UPC's) are an important alternative to study the QCD dynamics until the next generation of $e^+e^-/ ep / eA $ colliders become reality. Due to the coherent action of all the protons in the nucleus, the electromagnetic field is very strong and the resulting flux of equivalent photons is large, which allows to study two-photon as well as photonuclear interactions at high energies. In this paper we present a brief review of the vector meson production in UPC's at high energies using the QCD color dipole approach to describe their photonuclear production and the perturbative QCD Pomeron (BFKL dynamics) to describe the double meson production in photon-photon process. Predictions for rates and integrated cross sections are presented for energies of RHIC and LHC.