Hard Electroproduction of Hybrid Mesons

Abstract

We estimate the sizeable cross section for deep exclusive electroproduction of an exotic $J^{PC}=1^{-+}$ hybrid meson in the Bjorken regime. The production amplitude scales like the one for usual meson electroproduction, {\it i.e.} as $1/Q^2$. This is due to the non-vanishing leading twist distribution amplitude for the hybrid meson, which may be normalized thanks to its relation to the energy momentum tensor and to the QCD sum rules technique. The hard amplitude is considered up to next--to--leading order in $\alpha_{S}$ and we explore the consequences of fixing the renormalization scale ambiguity through the BLM procedure.