Central exclusive production of $\eta$ and $\eta'$ mesons in diffractive proton-proton collisions at the LHC

Abstract

We discuss central exclusive production (CEP) of $\eta$ and $\eta'(958)$ mesons in high-energy proton-proton collisions using the tensor-pomeron approach, incorporating absorption effects at the amplitude level. Model parameters are constrained using WA102 experimental data measured at $\sqrt{s} = 29.1$ GeV. We present cross sections and differential distributions for the LHC energy of $\sqrt{s} = 13$ TeV. For $pp \to pp \eta$, the upper limit of the total cross section is 2.5 $\mu$b for $|\eta_{M}|<1$ and 5.6 $\mu$b for $2<\eta_{M}<5$. For $pp \to pp \eta'$, the predicted cross sections are 0.3--0.7 $\mu$b and 0.9--2.1 $\mu$b in the respective pseudorapidity regions. These results demonstrate the feasibility of studying diffractive flavour singlet pseudoscalar meson production to probe the nature of the pomeron at the LHC.