Neutron tagging of quasielastic J/ψ photoproduction off nucleus in ultraperipheral heavy ion collisions at RHIC energies

Abstract We compare the coherent and quasielastic J / ψ photoproduction in the peripheral heavy ion collisions in kinematics of Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at s N N = 200 GeV . Our improved estimate of the total coherent cross section is a factor of two smaller than the earlier ones. We find that the counting rate of quasielastic J / ψ photoproduction tagged by neutrons emitted due to cascading of the recoiled nucleon within the residual nucleus exceeds the rate of the coherent events. We argue that measurements of this process can be used to learn about the dynamics of color dipole–nucleon interactions in nuclei in the wide effective range of energies of γA interactions.