Energy dependent nuclear suppression from gluon saturation in exclusive vector meson production
We calculate exclusive J / ψ photoproduction at high energies in the color glass condensate approach. The results are compared to the center-of-mass energy dependent γ + A → J / ψ + A cross sections extracted from measurements in ultraperipheral heavy ion collisions at RHIC and LHC. We predict strong saturation-driven nuclear suppression at high energies, while LHC data prefer even stronger suppression. We explore effects of nucleon shaped fluctuations and show that the most recent measurement of the | t | -differential incoherent J / ψ cross section prefers large event-by-event fluctuations of the nucleon substructure in heavy nuclei, comparable to that found for a free proton. Published by the American Physical Society 2024