First Measurement of the |t | Dependence of Incoherent J/ψ Photonuclear Production

Abstract

The first measurement of the cross section for incoherent photonuclear production of J/ψ vector mesons as a function of the Mandelstam |t| variable is presented. The measurement was carried out with the ALICE detector at midrapidity, |y|<0.8, using ultraperipheral collisions of Pb nuclei at a center-of-mass energy per nucleon pair of sNN=5.02 TeV. This rapidity interval corresponds to a Bjorken-x range (0.3-1.4)×10-3. Cross sections are given in five |t| intervals in the range 0.04<|t|<1 GeV2 and compared to the predictions by different models. Models that ignore quantum fluctuations of the gluon density in the colliding hadron predict a |t| dependence of the cross section much steeper than in data. The inclusion of such fluctuations in the same models provides a better description of the data. © 2024 CERN, for the ALICE Collaboration. Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.