Abstract. The photoproduction of vector mesons in Ultra-Peripheral Collisions (UPC) is a powerful tool to probe the nuclear gluon distribution (Pb-Pb collisions) and the gluon structure function in the proton (p-Pb collisions). The first measurements of coherent photoproduced J/ψ and ψ(2S) in Pb-Pb collisions at √ s NN = 2.76 TeV, performed with the ALICE detector, are described and compared to STARLIGHT and QCD based models, in order to investigate nuclear gluon shadowing. The results of the measurement of exclusive J/ψ photoproduction off protons in p-Pb collisions at √ s NN = 5.02 TeV are also presented.
Ultra-peripheral collisionsUltra-peripheral collisions may occur when two accelerated nuclei are separated by impact parameters larger than the sum of their radii: hadronic interactions are strongly suppressed so that both pure electromagnetic and photonuclear processes can be studied. These interactions can be measured in Pb-Pb collisions at the LHC, where the available centre of mass energy per nucleon pair is 2.76 TeV, allowing γγ interactions at ≈80 GeV and γp at ≈480 GeV center of mass energy, to be compared with 10 and 30 GeV respectively, reached at RHIC. An accelerated charge can be considered as a source of quasi-real photons with virtuality Q 2 depending on the radius of the Pb nucleus and being ∼30 MeV 2 , according to Fermi [1] and to relativistic approach by Weizsäcker [2] and Williams [3]. One of these quasi-real photons may interact either with the opposite ion or with one of its quasi-real photons. The cross section for photon induced reactions is large because the strong electromagnetic field of the nucleus enhances the intensity of the virtual photon flux, which grows as Z 2 , where Z is the charge of the nucleus. UPCs are characterized by the photoproduction of vector mesons (ρ 0 , J/ψ, ψ', Υ,...) and by pure QED processes giving rise to a di-lepton continuum. The physics of ultra-peripheral collisions is reviewed in [4,5].
Physics motivationsExclusive photoproduction of vector mesons, where a vector meson is produced in an event with no other final state particles, is of particular interest. In Pb-Pb collisions these measurements probe nuclear gluon shadowing in the low Bjorken-x region, where it is poorly known. On the other a e-mail: daniele.de.gruttola@cern.ch hand, p-Pb collisions allow the study of the evolution with energy of the gluon distribution in the proton, and provide a powerful tool to investigate gluon saturation. ALICE can extend the measurement done at HERA [6,7] and ZEUS [8] to higher γp center of mass energy.
Pb-Pb collisionsExclusive photoproduction of vector mesons is expected to probe the nuclear gluon distribution [9], for which there is considerable uncertainty in the low-x region, as it can be seen in Fig.1, showing the ratio of their parton distribution functions for bounded and free protons [10,11]. Exclusive photoproduction can be either coherent, if the photon couples coherently to all nucleons, or incoherent, if the photon couples to a single nucleon. Coheren...