Deeply virtual Compton scattering at the EIC and LHeC: a comparison among saturation approaches

Abstract

AbstractThe impact of nonlinear effects in the deeply virtual Compton scattering (DVCS) process that will be measured in future electron-hadron collisions is investigated. We present, for the first time, the predictions derived using the solution to the Balitsky–Kovchegov equation with the collinearly-improved kernel and including the impact-parameter dependence. We estimate the total cross section and t-distribution of the DVCS process in ep and eA collisions and demonstrate that $$d\sigma /dt$$ d σ / d t is strongly dependent on the assumption for the impact-parameter dependence of the dipole-hadron scattering amplitude. Our results indicate that a future experimental analysis of this process will be useful to discriminate among different models for the saturation physics and, consequently, will allow us to constrain the description of QCD dynamics in parton densities.