Eur. Phys. J. C (2007) 51: 83-101
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-007-0293-8

Regular Article - Theoretical Physics

Nonperturbative and perturbative aspects of photo- and electroproduction of vector mesons

¹ Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Heidelberg, Philosophenweg 16, 6900, Heidelberg, Germany
² Instituto de Física, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro, 21945-970, RJ, Brazil

^* e-mail: erasmo@if.ufrj.br

Received: 15 September 2006
Revised: 15 March 2007
Published online: 1 June 2007

Abstract

We discuss various aspects of vector meson production, first analysing the interplay between perturbative and nonperturbative aspects of the QCD calculation. Using a general method adapted to incorporate both perturbative and nonperturbative aspects, we show that nonperturbative effects are important for all experimentally available values of the photon virtuality Q². We compare the huge amount of experimental information now available with our theoretical results obtained using a specific nonperturbative model without free parameters, showing that quite simple features are able to explain the data.