Exclusive heavy vector meson photoproduction in hadronic collisions at the LHC: predictions of the Color Glass Condensate model for Run 2 energies

Abstract: In this letter we update our predictions for exclusive $J/\Psi$ and $\Upsilon$ photoproduction in proton-proton and nucleus - nucleus collisions at the Run 2 LHC energies obtained with the color dipole formalism and considering the impact parameter Color Glass Condensate model (bCGC) for the forward dipole - target scattering amplitude. A comparison with the LHCb data on rapidity distributions and photon - hadron cross sections is presented. Our results demonstrate that the current data can be quite well described by the bCGC model, which takes into account nonlinear effects in the QCD dynamics and reproduces the very precise HERA data, without introducing any additional effect or free parameter.