Eur. Phys. J. C (2008) 56: 33-38
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-008-0633-3

Regular Article - Theoretical Physics

Diffractive photoproduction of Z⁰ bosons in coherent interactions at CERN-LHC

¹ Instituto de Física e Matemática, Universidade Federal de Pelotas, Caixa Postal 354, CEP 96010-090, Pelotas, RS, Brazil
² Centro de Ciências Exatas e Tecnológicas, Universidade Federal do Pampa, Campus de Bagé, Rua Carlos Barbosa, CEP 96400-970, Bagé, RS, Brazil

^* e-mail: magnus@if.ufrgs.br

Received: 17 January 2008
Revised: 27 April 2008
Published online: 5 June 2008

Abstract

Exclusive Z⁰ photoproduction at high energies in γp(A), pp and AA collisions is investigated within the color dipole formalism. We generalize the description of the deeply virtual Compton scattering (DVCS) process, which describes the HERA data quite well, for the production of Z⁰ bosons and estimate the total cross section for the exclusive process γ^*h→Z⁰h (h=p,A) for different energies, photon virtualities and atomic numbers. As hadrons at collider energies are a source of Weizsäcker–Williams photons, we consider electromagnetic interactions in hadron–hadron collisions at Tevatron and LHC energies and estimate the rapidity distribution and the total cross section for Z⁰ production in the hh→hZ⁰h process. This may allow us to study, for instance, the physics of hadronic Z⁰ decays in a clean environment characterized by two rapidity gaps. Our results indicate that the experimental analyses of this process could be feasible in pp, but the physics scenario for AA collisions is not promising.