Elastic and inelastic $J/ψ$ photoproduction in $p$-$p$ collisions at LHC energies: the feature of Weizsäcker-Williams approximation

Abstract

The $J/ψ$ production originating from elastic and inelastic photoproduction processes in p-p collisions at LHC energies is investigated, where the fragmentation processes are involved. An exact treatment is performed, which adopts the Martin-Ryskin method to weight the contribution from different channels, and can return to Weizsäcker-Williams approximation (WWA) when $Q^{2}\rightarrow0$. The relevant kinematical relations are also achieved. We present a comprehensive analysis for the feature of WWA by comparing with the exact treatment. The results are expressed in $Q^{2}$, $y$, $z$, $p_{T}$, and $y_{r}$ (rapidity) distributions, and the total cross sections are also estimated. The numerical results indicate that, the incoherent-photon emission can provide the meaningful contribution to elastic photoproduction, and starts to play a very important role in the inelastic processes. The photoproduction and fragmentation processes can improve the contribution of $J/ψ$ production in $p$-$p$ collisions at LHC energies. Moreover, the WWA is only effective in very restricted domains, and the exact treatment is needed to deal accurately with the $J/ψ$ photoproduction, which can naturally avoid double counting and WWA errors.