Hard exclusive meson production in muon scattering at COMPASS

We report on measurements of hard exclusive muoproduction of ρ0, ω and π0 mesons on the proton at COMPASS using 160 GeV/c polarized μ+ and μ− beams scattering off a liquid hydrogen target. The extracted Spin Density Matrix Elements for vector mesons indicate a violation of s-channel helicity conservation for transitions of transversely polarized virtual photons to longitudinally polarized vector mesons, γT → VL, where V denotes ρ0 or ω meson. Additionally, for ρ0 production we observe a dominant contribution of natural-parity-exchange transitions and a small contribution of unnaturalparity-exchange transitions. On the contrary, the contribution of unnaturalparity-exchange for ω production is significant and it decreases with increasing W, being still non-negligible at the largest W values accessible at COMPASS. Further, we present also the absolute value of the differential cross section for exclusive π0 production and its dependence on squared four-momentum transfer t and azimuthal angle ø between the scattering plane and π0 production plane. The results provide an important input for modeling Generalized Parton Distribution (GPDs), and in particular to constrain chiral-odd (transversity) GPDs.