Exclusive photoproduction of a di-meson pair with large invariant mass

Abstract

We consider the exclusive photoproduction of a di-meson pair with large invariant mass, γN → N ′ M1 M2 , in the framework of collinear factorisation. The mesons considered M1 and M2 are either pions or rho mesons, charged or neutral. We consider the kinematic regime characterised by a large invariant mass of the two-meson system, and a small deflection of the nucleon in the centre-of-mass frame. In this kinematic domain, the amplitude factorises into a perturbative hard part and non perturbative parts described by Generalised Parton Distributions (GPDs) and Distribution Amplitudes (DAs). We automate the calculation of the fully differential cross section at leading twist and leading order, and we present some numerical results at JLab 12 GeV kinematics. This class of processes provides yet more exclusive 2 → 3 channels that can be used to extract GPDs.