Eur. Phys. J. C (2007) 52: 933-966
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-007-0423-3

Regular Article - Theoretical Physics

Next-to-leading order corrections in exclusive meson production

Deutsches Elektronen-Synchroton DESY, 22603, Hamburg, Germany

^* e-mail: markus.diehl@desy.de

Received: 9 August 2007
Published online: 24 October 2007

Abstract

We analyze in detail the size of next-to-leading order corrections to hard exclusive meson production within the collinear factorization approach. Corrections to the cross section are found to be huge at small x_B and substantial in typical fixed-target kinematics. With the models we take for nucleon helicity-flip distributions, the transverse target polarization asymmetry in vector meson production is strongly affected by radiative corrections, except at large x_B. Its overall size is very small for ρ production but can be large in the ω channel.