Diffractive photoproduction of vector mesons at the LHC

Abstract: We confront saturation-based results for diffractive $\psi(2s)$ and $\rho$ production at HERA and $J/\psi$ photoproduction with all available data including recent ones from HERA, ALICE and LHCb, finding a good agreement. We show that the $t$-distribution of differential cross-section of photoproduction of vector mesons offers a unique opportunity to discriminate among saturation and non-saturation models. This is due to emergence of a pronounced dip (or multiple dips) in the $t$-distribution of diffractive photoproduction of vector mesons at relatively large, but potentially accessible $|t|$ that can be traced back to the unitarity features of colour dipole amplitude in the saturation regime. We provide various predictions for exclusive (photo)-production of different vector mesons including the ratio of $\psi(2s)/J/\psi$ at HERA, the LHC and at future colliders.