Speaker
Description
Photon-induced vector meson production in ultraperipheral heavy-ion collisions (UPCs) offers a unique and powerful probe of the gluon distribution in nuclei. The $\phi$ meson, with its mass around 1 GeV, lies at the boundary of hard scales between the perturbative and nonperturbative QCD regimes, making it uniquely suited to probe the transition between these two domains. Similarly, coherent vector meson photoproduction in UPCs of even lighter species such as the $\rho$ serves as a powerful tool for investigating the gluon structure of nuclei at small Bjorken-$x$, accessing lower energy scales with potential sensitivity to gluon saturation and nuclear shadowing. In this talk, the differential cross sections for coherent $\phi$ meson photoproduction a function of $\phi$ rapidity and the measurement of coherent $\rho^0$ photoproduction in Pb+Pb UPCs at $\sqrt{s_{NN}} = 5.36$ TeV with the CMS detector are presented.
| Speaker confirmation | Yes |
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