Is J/psi-Nucleon Scattering Dominated by the Gluonic van der Waals Interaction?

Abstract

The gluon-exchange contribution to $J/ψ$-nucleon scattering is shown to yield a sizeable scattering length of about -0.25 fm, which is consistent with the sparse available data. Hadronic corrections to gluon exchange which are generated by $ρπ$ and $D\bar D$ intermediate states of the $J/ψ$ are shown to be negligible. We also propose a new method to study $J/ψ$-nucleon elastic scattering in the reaction $π^+ d\to J/ψp p$.