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Near-threshold heavy quarkonium photoproduction in a light-front spectator model

Amrita Sain1,2,3,*, Bheemsehan Gurjar4,5,†, and Chandan Mondal1,2,3,‡

  • *Contact author: amrita@impcas.ac.cn
  • †Contact author: gbheem@ustc.edu.cn
  • ‡Contact author: mondal@impcas.ac.cn
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Phys. Rev. D 113, 054041 – Published 27 March, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/gz4s-ynt4

Abstract

The near-threshold photo- and electroproduction of heavy vector quarkonia off the proton provides direct access to its gluonic structure. In particular, the cross section for J/Ψ photoproduction near threshold is governed by the proton’s gluon gravitational form factors (GFFs). In this work, we employ the leading-order generalized parton distribution framework, together with gluon GFFs calculated in a light-front gluon-spectator model inspired by soft-wall AdS/QCD to predict both the differential and total cross sections for near-threshold J/Ψ and ϒ photoproduction. Our results for J/ψ photoproduction show good agreement with the low-momentum-transfer data from the J/ψ−007 experiment and the GlueX Collaboration at Jefferson Lab. However, at large momentum transfer, the next-to-leading order QCD effects are necessary to describe the data.

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Phys. Rev. D 113, 054041– Published 27 March, 2026
  • Received 16 January 2026
  • Accepted 4 March 2026
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