Diffractive production of S and D wave vector mesons in DIS

Abstract

In this work the production of vector mesons in diffractive DIS is analyzed, with an emphasis on the impact of the internal spin structure of a vector meson upon its virtual photoproduction rate. We derived the full sets of s-channel helicity conserving and violating amplitudes for pure S and D wave vector mesons and found a striking difference between S and D wave vector meson production. First, in the case of helicity conserving amplitudes, D wave vector mesons were found to exhibit dramatically different Q^2-behavior due to abnormally large higher twist contributions. Besides, we found that helicity conserving amplitudes for S and D states are numerically comparable, which makes the physical rho meson very sensitive to D wave admixture. Second, the helicity violating amplitudes turned out large both for S and D wave states of light vector mesons and for D wave heavy vector mesons as well. Aiming at producing sort of a manual on the diffractive vector meson production, we carried out all calculations in a pedagogical manner with maximally full presentation of intermediate steps and accompanied them with detailed qualitative discussion.