Imprints of nuclear shell structure in exclusive vector meson production
Abstract
We report for the first time that, within the saturation framework, exclusive vector meson production at small x is sensitive to the shell structure of the target nucleus. Self-consistent nuclear densities from occupied single-particle orbitals in the quark-meson coupling (QMC) model modify the coherent |t|-differential cross section, enhancing secondary diffractive lobes in light nuclei and displacing the higher-order minima in intermediate-mass nuclei, whereas for heavy targets the shifts are weaker. Because the small J/ψ dipole is insensitive to saturation, these features make coherent J/ψ production a clean probe of nuclear shell structure, most favorably for intermediate-mass nuclei such as calcium isotopes. For the larger ϕ dipole, shell structure must be included in the nuclear initial state before saturation effects can be isolated in differential observables at the Electron Ion Collider. Our results establish exclusive vector meson production as a probe of the mean-field nuclear structure at small x and provide a baseline for isolating residual many-body correlations.
Related
- Electromagnetic structure of strange vector mesons in nuclear medium
- Imprints of the nuclear liquid-gas phase transition on net-baryon number fluctuations
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- Paired charmonium and bottomonium production in rare exclusive decays of Z boson
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BibTeX
@misc{mondal2026imprints,
title = {{Imprints of nuclear shell structure in exclusive vector meson production}},
author = {Arpita Mondal and Arjun Kumar and Debojit Sarkar},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = aug,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2608.23445},
eprint = {2608.23445},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.23445},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Imprints of nuclear shell structure in exclusive vector meson production
AU - Arpita Mondal
AU - Arjun Kumar
AU - Debojit Sarkar
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/08/30
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2608.23445
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2608.23445
AB - We report for the first time that, within the saturation framework, exclusive vector meson production at small x is sensitive to the shell structure of the target nucleus. Self-consistent nuclear densities from occupied single-particle orbitals in the quark-meson coupling (QMC) model modify the coherent |t|-differential cross section, enhancing secondary diffractive lobes in light nuclei and displacing the higher-order minima in intermediate-mass nuclei, whereas for heavy targets the shifts are weaker. Because the small J/ψ dipole is insensitive to saturation, these features make coherent J/ψ production a clean probe of nuclear shell structure, most favorably for intermediate-mass nuclei such as calcium isotopes. For the larger ϕ dipole, shell structure must be included in the nuclear initial state before saturation effects can be isolated in differential observables at the Electron Ion Collider. Our results establish exclusive vector meson production as a probe of the mean-field nuclear structure at small x and provide a baseline for isolating residual many-body correlations.
ER -