Exclusive ηc production by γ * γ interactions in electron-ion collisions

One of the main goals of future electron-ion colliders is to improve our understanding of the structure of hadrons. In this letter, we study the exclusive & eta;cproduction by & gamma; *& gamma; interactions in eA collisions and demonstrate that future experimental analysis of this process can be used to improve the description of the & eta;ctransition form factor. The rapidity, transverse momentum and photon virtuality distributions are estimated considering the energy and target configurations expected to be present at the EIC, EicC and LHeC and assuming different predictions for the light-front wave function of the & eta;c meson. Our results indicate that the electron-ion colliders can be considered an alternative to providing supplementary data to those obtained in e-e+ colliders. & COPY; 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons .org /licenses /by /4 .0/). Funded by SCOAP3.

Automated summary

In this letter, the exclusive ηc production by γ*γ interactions in eA collisions is studied, and it is demonstrated that future experimental analysis of this process can improve the description of the ηctransition form factor. The distributions of rapidity, transverse momentum, and photon virtuality are estimated, considering the expected energy and target configurations at the EIC, EicC, and LHeC, as well as different predictions for the light-front wave function of the ηc meson. The results suggest that electron-ion colliders can provide supplementary data to those obtained in e-e+ colliders.