Photon-odderon interference in exclusive charmonium production at the Electron-Ion Collider
Sanjin Benić (Department of Physics, Faculty of Science, University of Zagreb, Bijenička c. 32, 10000 Zagreb, Croatia); Adrian Dumitru (Department of Natural Sciences, Baruch College, CUNY, 17 Lexington Avenue, New York, New York 10010, USA, The Graduate School and University Center, The City University of New York, 365 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10016, USA); Abhiram Kaushik (Centre for Informatics and Computing, Rudjer Bošković Institute, HR-10002 Zagreb, Croatia); Leszek Motyka (Jagiellonian University, Institute of Theoretical Physics, Łojasiewicza 11, 30-348 Kraków, Poland); Tomasz Stebel (Jagiellonian University, Institute of Theoretical Physics, Łojasiewicza 11, 30-348 Kraków, Poland)
Exclusive scalar, axial-vector, and tensor quarkonium production in high-energy electron-proton scattering requires a -odd -channel exchange of a photon or a three-gluon ladder. We derive the expressions for the corresponding amplitudes. The relative phase of the photon vs three-gluon exchange amplitudes is determined by the sign of the light-front matrix element of the eikonal color current operator at moderate , and is not affected by small- QCD evolution. Model calculations predict constructive interference, which is particularly strong for momentum transfer where the cross section for production exceeds that for pure photon exchange by up to a factor of 4. Exclusive electroproduction at the high luminosity Electron-Ion Collider occurs with well measurable rates and measurements of these processes should find evidence for the perturbative odderon exchange. We also compute the total electroproduction cross section as a function of energy and provide first estimates of the number of events per month at the Electron-Ion Collider design luminosity.
