text:
# Smodels: A System for Answer Set ProgrammingThe work has been funded by the Academy of Finland (Project 43963) and by Helsinki Graduate School in Computer Science and Engineering.

## General Information

The Smodels system is written in C++ and the source code, test cases and documentation are available at http://www.tcs.hut.fi/Software/smodels/. In order to compile the system a C++ compiler is needed as well as other standard tools such as make, tar, bison, and perl. The system has been developed under Linux and should work as is on any platform having the appropriate GNU tools installed. It has been used on a wide range of hardware (PC/SPARC/Alpha) mostly running Unix. The total number of lines of codes is about 20000.

## Description of the System

The Smodels system implements the stable model semantics for normal logic programs extended by built-in functions as well as cardinality and weight constraints for domain-restricted programs. In this section we briefly discuss the syntax, implementation techniques and use of the system. More information can be found at the home page http://www.tcs.hut.fi/Software/smodels/.

As input the Smodels system takes logic program rules basically in Prolog style syntax:

```
    ancestor(X,Y) :- ancestor(X,Z),
                     parent(Z,Y),
                     person(X).
    ancestor(X,Y) :- parent(X,Y).
    son(X,Y) :- parent(Y,X), male(X).
    daughter(X,Y) :- parent(Y,X), female(X).
    person(X) :- male(X).
    person(X) :- female(X).
    parent(jack, jill). parent(joan, jack).
    male(jack). female(jill). female(joan).

```

However, in order to support efficient implementation techniques and extensions the programs are required to be *domain-restricted* where the idea is the following. No proper function symbols are allowed (but we do allow built-in functions) and the predicate symbols in the program are divided into two classes, *domain predicates* and *non-domain predicates*. Domain predicates are predicates that are defined non-recursively. In the program above all predicates except `ancestor` are domain predicates. The predicate `ancestor` is not a domain predicate because it depends recursively on itself.

The main intuition of domain predicates is that they are used to define the set of terms over which the variables range in each rule of a program $`P`$. All rules of $`P`$ have to be domain-restricted in the sense that every variable in a rule must appear in a domain predicate which appears positively in the rule body. For instance, in the first rule of the program above all variables appear in domain predicates `parent` and `person` in the body of the rule.

In addition to normal logic program rules, Smodels supports rules with cardinality and weight constraints. The idea is that, e.g., a cardinality constraint

$$\mathtt{1\; \{\; a,b,not\; c\; \}\; 2}$$

holds in a stable model if at the least 1 but at most 2 of the literals in the constraint are satisfied in the model and a weight constraint

$$\mathtt{10\; [\; a=10,\; b=10,\; not\; c=10\; ]\; 20}$$

holds if the sum of weights of the literals satisfied in the model is between 10 and 20 (inclusive). With built-in functions for integer arithmetic (included in the system), these kinds of rules allow compact and fairly straightforward encodings of many interesting problems. For example, the N queens problem can be captured using rules as a program `queens.lp` as follows:

```
    1 { q(X,Y):d(X) } 1 :- d(Y).
    1 { q(X,Y):d(Y) } 1 :- d(X).
    :- d(X), d(Y), d(X1), d(Y1),
       q(X,Y), q(X1,Y1),
       X != X1,  Y != Y1,
       abs(X - X1) == abs(Y - Y1).
    d(1..n).

```

where `d(1..n)` is a domain predicate giving the dimension of the board (from 1 to integer $`n`$ which can be specified during run time). The first rule says that for each row $`y`$, a stable model contains exactly one atom $`q(x,y)`$ where for $`x`$, $`d(x)`$ holds and similarly in the second rule for all columns. The third rule is an integrity constraint saying that there cannot be two queens on the same diagonal. Now each stable model corresponds to a legal configuration of $`n`$ queens on a $`n\times n`$ board, i.e., $`q(x,y)`$ is in a stable model iff $`(x,y)`$ is a legal position for a queen.

Stable models of a domain-restricted logic program with variables are computed in three stages. First, the program is transformed into a ground program without variables. Second, the rules of the ground program are translated into primitive rules, and third, a stable model is computed using a Davis-Putnam like procedure (?). The first two stages have been implemented in the program lparse, which functions as a front end to smodels which in turn implements the third stage.

In the first stage lparse automatically determines the domain predicates and then using database techniques evaluates the domain predicates and creates a ground program which has exactly the same stable models as the original program with variables. Then the rules are compiled into primitive rules (?).

The smodels procedure is a Davis-Putnam like backtracking search procedure that finds the stable models of a set of primitive rules by assigning truth values to the atoms of the program. Moreover, it uses the properties of the stable model semantics to infer and propagate additional truth values. Since the procedure is in effect traversing a binary search tree, the number of nodes in the search space is in the worst case on the order of $`2^n`$, where $`n`$ can be taken to be the number of atoms that appear in a constraint in a head of a rule or that appear as a negative literal in a recursive loop of the program.

Hence, in order to compute stable models, one uses the two programs lparse, which translates logic programs into an internal format, and smodels, which computes the models, see Figure 1.

For instance, a solution to the 8 queens problem given the program `queens.lp` above, would be typically computed by a command line:

```
lparse -c n=8 -d none queens.lp | smodels

```

where `-c n=8` option instructs to use the value 8 for the constant $`n`$ and `-d none` option instructs to remove all domain predicates from the rules as soon as they have been evaluated. The command line produces output:

```
Answer: 1
Stable Model: q(4,1) q(2,2) q(7,3) q(5,4)
q(1,5) q(8,6) q(6,7) q(3,8)

```

### A Further Example

The graph coloring problem may be encoded to a program `ncolor.lp` using the following two Smodels rules:

```
  1 { col(N, C) : color(C) } 1 :- node(N).
  :- col(X, C), col(Y,C), edge(X,Y), color(C).

```

Here the predicate `col(N,C)` denotes that the color of the node `N` is `C`. The first rule states that each node has exactly one color and the second rule states that two adjacent nodes may not have the same color. Suppose we have a fully connected three node graph and we want to find all 3-colorings of it where the first node is colored red. We can encode the problem instance to a program `graph.lp`:

```
  node(a ; b; c).
  edge(a,b). edge(a,c). edge(b,c).
  color(red ; green ; blue).
  compute { col(a, red) }.

```

The first two lines define the graph and the third line defines the three colors. The `compute` statement tells Smodels that we are interested only in those models where `col(a, red)` is true, i.e., the node `a` has color `red`. We can find all stable models that satisfy the compute statement with the command line:

```
lparse -d none ncolor.lp graph.lp | smodels 0

```

This input produces the output:

```
Answer: 1
Stable Model: col(c,blue) col(b,green)
col(a,red)
Answer: 2
Stable Model: col(c,green) col(b,blue)
col(a,red)

```

More information about the syntax and use of the system can be found in the lparse user’s manual at http://www.tcs.hut.fi/Software/smodels/lparse/ and about the implementation in (??).

## Applying the System

### Methodology

An interesting application methodology for Smodels is based on answer set programming (??) which has emerged as a viable approach to declarative logic-based knowledge representation. It is based on the stable model semantics of logic programs and can be seen as a novel form of constraint programming where constraints are expressed as rules. The underlying idea is to encode an application problem using logic program rules so that the solutions to the problem are captured by the stable models of the rules. The solution of the N queens problem in the previous section illustrates nicely main ideas of answer set programming.

### Specifics

It is important that the system is based on an implementation-independent declarative semantics. This makes it much easier to develop applications because one does not have to worry too much about the internal implementation-specific aspects of the system. Hence, the system is relatively easy to learn to use. On the other hand, declarative semantics provides much more flexibility in developing implementation approaches and in optimizing different parts of the implementation. We have taken advantage of this and developed methods which are substantially different from usual implementation methods for logic programming (Prolog) but still work efficiently in new kinds of applications where Prolog style systems are not appropriate.

Smodels implements the stable model semantics for range-restricted function free normal programs. It can also compute well-founded models for these programs. Smodels supports built-in functions, e.g., for integer arithmetic. Basic Smodels extends normal logic programs with cardinality and weight constraints (??). On top of this core engine more involved systems can be built. As an example, we have implemented total and partial stable model computation for disjunctive logic programs (?).

The semantics for logic programs with cardinality and weight constraints supported by the core engine is an interesting compromise: it is rather simple to learn, its complexity stays in NP in the ground case (like for propositional logic) but it seems strictly more expressive than propositional logic (or other standard constraint satisfaction formalisms).

With our work on Smodels we hope to demonstrate that nonmonotonic reasoning techniques are useful conceptual tools as well as bring computational advantages which can lead to new interesting applications and to developments of novel implementation techniques and tools.

### Users and Usability

The basic semantics of Smodels rules seems to be simple enough that it can be explained to a non-expert or a student in a relatively short amount of time sufficiently so that one can start using Smodels.

Smodels has been employed in a number of areas including planning (???), model checking (?), reachability analysis (??), product configuration (??), dynamic constraint satisfaction (?), feature interaction (?), and logical cryptanalysis (?).

In order to make Smodels more flexible an API has been added to lparse and smodels. Hence, they can be used through the API and embedded into a C/C++ program as libraries. Furthermore, it is possible to define new built-in functions for the front-end lparse in order to accommodate new applications. These new functions are written in C/C++ and they are dynamically linked to lparse when needed.

As a further usability feature, lparse performs simple analysis of the program and warns about constructs that are often erroneous. For example, lparse detects if a variable is accidentally mistyped as a constant or vice versa. These warnings can be enabled with command line options.

## Evaluating the System

### Benchmarks

We have compiled quite a large collection of families of benchmarks that we use to evaluate new developments and improvements in our system and which we can employ to compare our system to other competing ones and which can be used also by others (see, http://www.tcs.hut.fi/Software/smodels/tests/). Similar testing methodology (e.g., generating test cases from graph problems) has also been used by the groups in Kentucky (DeReS/TheoryBase system (?)) and in Vienna (dlv system (?)). These kinds of tests can be used for measuring the base level performance and to compare different systems. However, it is unclear what is a portable way of representing such benchmarks. We use Prolog style syntax which is quite generally accepted but it seems that each system has its specialties.

### Comparison

Smodels can already compete with special purpose systems and we have even cases where it outperforms commercial top edge tools, e.g., in a verification application it has performance better than that of one of the most efficient commercial integer programming tools (CPLEX) (?).

### Problem Size

We believe that Smodels is no longer a mere prototype but it can handle realistic size problems. We have applications where programs with hundreds of thousands of non-trivial ground rules are treated efficiently, see e.g. (??).


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# References

. 24 March 2000

Anomalous $`t`$-dependence in diffractive electroproduction of 2S radially excited light vector mesons at HERA

J. Nemchik

Institute of Experimental Physics, Slovak Academy of Sciences,
Watsonova 47, 04353 Košice, Slovakia

Abstract

Within the color dipole gBFKL dynamics applied to the diffraction slope, we predict an anomalous $`t`$ dependence of the differential cross section as a function of energy and $`Q^2`$ for production of radially excited $`V^{}(2S)`$ light vector mesons in contradiction with a well known standard monotonous $`t`$\- behaviour for $`V(1S)`$ mesons. The origin of this phenomenon is based on the interplay of the nodal structure of $`V^{}(2S)`$ radial wave function with the energy and dipole size dependence of the color dipole cross section and of the diffraction slope. We present how a different position of the node in $`V^{}(2S)`$ wave function leads to a different form of anomalous $`t`$\- behaviour of the differential cross section and discuss a possibility how to determine this position from the low energy and HERA data.

The main goal of this paper is a demonstration of further salient features of the node effect  coming from the nodal structure of radial wave function for $`V^{}(2S)`$ vector mesons in conjunction with the gBFKL phenomenology of the diffraction slope  leading to anomalous $`t`$ dependence of the differential cross section for $`V^{}(2S)`$ production in contrast with the standard monotonous $`t`$ behaviour of $`d\sigma (\gamma ^{}V)/dt`$ for $`V(1S)`$ production.

Diffractive photo- and electroproduction of ground state $`V(1S)`$ and radially excited $`V^{}(2S)`$ vector mesons,

$$\gamma ^{}pV(V^{})pV=\rho ,\mathrm{\Phi },\omega ,J/\mathrm{\Psi },\mathrm{{\rm Y}}\mathrm{}(V^{}=\rho ^{},\mathrm{\Phi }^{},\omega ^{},\mathrm{\Psi }^{},\mathrm{{\rm Y}}^{}\mathrm{}),$$
(1)
at high c.m.s. energy $`W=\sqrt{s}`$ intensively studied by the recent experiments at HERA represents one of a main source for a further development of the pomeron physics. The pomeron exchange in diffractive leptoproduction of vector mesons at high energies has been intensively studied  within the framework of perturbative QCD (pQCD).

The standard approach to the pQCD is based on the BFKL equation , which represents the integral equation for the leading-log$`s`$ (LLs) evolution of the gluon distribution, formulated in the scaling approximation of the infinite gluon correlation radius, $`R_c\mathrm{}`$, (massless gluons) and of the fixed running coupling, $`\alpha _S=const`$. Later, however, a novel $`s`$-channel approach to the $`LLs`$ BFKL equation (running gBFKL approach) has been developed  in terms of the color dipole cross section $`\sigma (\xi ,r)`$ (hereafter $`r`$ is the transverse size of the color dipole, $`\xi =log(\frac{W^2+Q^2}{m_V^2+Q^2})`$ is the rapidity variable) and incorporates consistently the asymptotic freedom (AF) (i.e. the running QCD coupling $`\alpha _S(r)`$) and the finite propagation radius $`R_c`$ of perturbative gluons. The freezing of $`\alpha _S(r)`$, $`\alpha _S(r)\alpha _S^{fr}`$, and the gluon correlation radius $`R_c`$ represents the nonperturbative parameters, which describe the transition from the soft (nonperturbative, infrared) to the hard (perturbative) region.

The details of the gBFKL phenomenology of diffractive electroproduction of light vector mesons are presented in the paper . The color dipole phenomenology of the diffraction slope for photo- and electroproduction of heavy vector mesons has been developed in the paper . The analysis of the diffractive production of light  and heavy  vector mesons at $`t=0`$ within the gBFKL phenomenology shows that the $`1S`$ vector meson production amplitude probes the color dipole cross section at the dipole size $`rr_S`$ (scanning phenomenon ), where the scanning radius can be expressed through the scale parameter $`A`$

$$r_S\frac{A}{\sqrt{m_V^2+Q^2}},$$
(2)
where $`Q^2`$ is the photon virtuality, $`m_V`$ is the vector meson mass and $`A6`$. Thus, changing $`Q^2`$ and the mass of the produced vector meson, one can probe the dipole cross section $`\sigma (\xi ,r)`$, and the dipole diffraction slope $`B(\xi ,r)`$, and measure so the effective intercept $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{eff}(\xi ,r)=\mathrm{log}\sigma (\xi ,r)/\xi `$ and the local Regge slope $`\alpha _{eff}^{}(\xi ,r)=\frac{1}{2}B(\xi ,r)/\xi `$ in a very broad range of the dipole sizes, $`r`$. This fact allows also to study the transition between the perturbative (hard) and nonperturbative (soft) regimes.

The experimental investigation of the electroproduction of the radially excited ($`2S`$) vector mesons can extend an additional information on the dipole cross section and on the dipole diffraction slope. The presence of the node in the $`2S`$ radial wave function leads to a strong cancellation of the dipole size contributions to the production amplitude from the region above and below the node position, $`r_n`$, in the $`2S`$ radial wave function . For this reason, the amplitudes of the electroproduction of the $`1S`$ and $`2S`$ vector mesons probe $`\sigma (\xi ,r)`$ and $`B(\xi ,r)`$ in a different way. The onset of strong node effect has been demonstrated in Ref.  in electroproduction of radially excited light vector mesons leading to an anomalous $`Q^2`$ and energy dependence of the production cross section. The node effect is much weaker for the electroproduction of $`2S`$ heavy vector mesons but still leads to a slightly different $`Q^2`$ and energy dependence of the production cross section for $`\mathrm{\Psi }^{}`$ vs. $`J/\mathrm{\Psi }`$ and to a nonmonotonic $`Q^2`$ dependence of the diffraction slope at small $`Q^2\text{ }<5`$ GeV2 for $`\mathrm{\Psi }^{}`$ production . Only for $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}^{}`$ production, the node effect is negligible small and gives approximately the same $`Q^2`$ and energy behaviour of the production cross section and practically the same diffraction slope at $`t=0`$ for $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}`$ and $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}^{}`$ production . Therefore, it is very important to explore farther the salient features of the node effect with conjunction with the emerging gBFKL phenomenology of the diffraction slope especially in production of $`V^{}(2S)`$ light vector mesons where the node effect is expected to be very strong.

There are two main reasons which affect the cancellation pattern in the diffraction slope for $`2S`$ state. The first reason is connected with the $`Q^2`$ behaviour of the scanning radius $`r_S`$ (see (2)); for the electroproduction of $`V^{}(2S)`$ light vector mesons at moderate $`Q^2`$ when the scanning radius $`r_S`$ is close to $`r_n`$, due to $`r^2`$ behaviour of $`B(\xi ,r)`$ , even a slight variation of $`r_S`$ with $`Q^2`$ strongly changes the cancellation pattern and leads to an anomalous $`Q^2`$ dependence of the forward diffraction slope, $`B(t=0)`$ . The second reason is due to different energy dependence of $`\sigma (\xi ,r)`$ at different dipole sizes $`r`$ coming from the gBFKL dynamics leading also to an anomalous energy dependence of $`B(t=0)`$ for the $`V^{}(2S)`$ production. This nonmonotonous energy and $`Q^2`$ dependence of the diffraction slope for production of light vector mesons will be detaily studied elsewhere .

The effects mentioned above are sensitive to the form of the dipole cross section. In Ref.  we presented the first direct determination of the color dipole cross section from the data on the photo- and electroproduction of $`V(1S)`$ vector mesons. So extracted dipole cross section is in a good agreement with the dipole cross section obtained from gBFKL analysis . This fact confirms a very reasonable choice of the nonperturbative component of the dipole cross section corresponding to a soft nonperturbative mechanism contribution to the scattering amplitude.

In the present paper we concentrate on the production of $`2S`$ radially excited light vector mesons, where the node in the radial wave function in conjunction with the subasymptotic energy dependence of $`B(\xi ,r)`$ leads to a strikingly different $`t`$ dependence of the differential cross section at different energies and $`Q^2`$ for the production of $`V^{}(2S)`$ vs. $`V(1S)`$ vector mesons. As was mentioned above, due to a large value of the scale parameter in (2), the large-distance contributions to the production amplitude from the semiperturbative and nonperturbative region of color dipoles, $`r\text{ }>R_c`$, becomes substantial especially for light vector mesons. Only the virtual $`\rho ^0`$ and $`\varphi ^0`$ photoproduction at $`Q^2\text{ }>100`$ GeV2 can be treated as a purely perturbative process, when the production amplitude is dominantly contributed from the perturbative region, $`r\text{ }<R_c`$.

Thus, in this paper we present the $`Q^2`$ and energy dependence of the $`t`$\- behaviour of the differential cross section for electroproduction of the ground state and radially excited (2S) light vector meson. and study how the position of the node in the radial wave function for (2S) vector mesons can be extracted from the data. We present an exact prescription how the experimental measurement of the $`t`$ dependent differential cross section for $`V^{}(2S)`$ production could distinguish between the undercompensation and overcompensation scenarios of the $`2S`$ production amplitude (see below). The explicit form of that $`t`$\- behaviour is connected with the position of the node in radial wave function for $`V^{}(2S)`$ vector mesons.

In the mixed $`(𝐫,z)`$ representation, the high energy meson is considered as a system of color dipole described by the distribution of the transverse separation $`𝐫`$ of the quark and antiquark given by the $`q\overline{q}`$ wave function, $`\mathrm{\Psi }(𝐫,z)`$, where $`z`$ is the fraction of meson’s lightcone momentum carried by a quark. The Fock state expansion for the relativistic meson starts with the $`q\overline{q}`$ state and the higher Fock states $`q\overline{q}g\mathrm{}`$ become very important at high energy $`\nu `$. The interaction of the relativistic color dipole of the dipole moment, $`𝐫`$, with the target nucleon is quantified by the energy dependent color dipole cross section, $`\sigma (\xi ,r)`$, satisfying the gBFKL equation  for the energy evolution. This reflects the fact that in the leading-log $`\frac{1}{x}`$ approximation the effect of higher Fock states can be reabsorbed into the energy dependence of $`\sigma (\xi ,r)`$. The dipole cross section is flavor independent and represents the universal function of $`r`$ which describes various diffractive processes in unified form. At high energy, when the transverse separation, $`𝐫`$, of the quark and antiquark is frozen during the interaction process, the scattering matrix describing the $`q\overline{q}`$-nucleon interaction becomes diagonal in the mixed $`(𝐫,z)`$-representation ($`z`$ is known also as the Sudakov light cone variable). This diagonalization property is held even when the dipole size, $`𝐫`$, is large, i.e. beyond the perturbative region of short distances. The detailed discussion about the space-time pattern of diffractive electroproduction of vector mesons is presented in .

Following an advantage of the $`(𝐫,z)`$-diagonalization of the $`q\overline{q}N`$ scattering matrix, the imaginary part of the production amplitude for the real (virtual) photoproduction of vector mesons with the momentum transfer $`𝐪`$ can be represented in the factorized form

$$\mathrm{Im}(\gamma ^{}V,\xi ,Q^2,𝐪)=V|\sigma (\xi ,r,z,𝐪)|\gamma ^{}=\underset{0}{\overset{1}{}}𝑑zd^2𝐫\sigma (\xi ,r,z,𝐪)\mathrm{\Psi }_V^{}(𝐫,z)\mathrm{\Psi }_\gamma ^{}(𝐫,z)$$
(3)
whose normalization is $`d\sigma /dt|_{t=0}=||^2/16\pi .`$ In Eq. (3), $`\mathrm{\Psi }_\gamma ^{}(𝐫,z)`$ and $`\mathrm{\Psi }_V(𝐫,z)`$ represent the probability amplitudes to find the color dipole of size, $`r`$, in the photon and quarkonium (vector meson), respectively. The color dipole distribution in (virtual) photons was derived in . $`\sigma (\xi ,r,z,𝐪)`$ is the scattering matrix for $`q\overline{q}N`$ interaction and represents the above mentioned color dipole cross section for $`𝐪=0`$. The color dipole cross section $`\sigma (\xi ,r)`$ depends only on the dipole size $`r`$. For small $`𝐪`$ considered in this paper, one can safely neglect the $`z`$-dependence of $`\sigma (\xi ,r,z,𝐪)`$ for light and heavy vector meson production and set $`z=\frac{1}{2}`$. This follows partially from the analysis within double gluon exchange approximation  leading to a slow $`z`$ dependence of the dipole cross section.

The energy dependence of the dipole cross section is quantified in terms of the dimensionless rapidity, $`\xi =\mathrm{log}\frac{1}{x_{eff}}`$, and $`x_{eff}`$ is the effective value of the Bjorken variable

$$x_{eff}=\frac{Q^2+m_V^2}{Q^2+W^2}\frac{m_V^2+Q^2}{2\nu m_p},$$
(4)
where $`m_p`$ and $`m_V`$ is the proton mass and mass of vector meson, respectively. Hereafter, we will write the energy dependence of the dipole cross section in both variables, either in $`\xi `$ or in $`x_{eff}`$ whenever convenient.

The production amplitudes for the transversely (T) and the longitudinally (L) polarized vector mesons with the small momentum transfer, $`𝐪`$, can be written in more explicit form

$`\mathrm{Im}_T(x_{eff},Q^2,𝐪)={\displaystyle \frac{N_cC_V\sqrt{4\pi \alpha _{em}}}{(2\pi )^2}}`$
$`{\displaystyle }d^2𝐫\sigma (x_{eff},r,𝐪){\displaystyle _0^1}{\displaystyle \frac{dz}{z(1z)}}\{m_q^2K_0(\epsilon r)\varphi (r,z)[z^2+(1z)^2]\epsilon K_1(\epsilon r)_r\varphi (r,z)\}`$
$`={\displaystyle \frac{1}{(m_V^2+Q^2)^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{dr^2}{r^2}\frac{\sigma (x_{eff},r,𝐪)}{r^2}W_T(Q^2,r^2)}`$ (5)
$`\mathrm{Im}_L(x_{eff},Q^2,𝐪)={\displaystyle \frac{N_cC_V\sqrt{4\pi \alpha _{em}}}{(2\pi )^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{2\sqrt{Q^2}}{m_V}}`$
$`{\displaystyle }d^2𝐫\sigma (x_{eff},r,𝐪){\displaystyle _0^1}dz\{[m_q^2+z(1z)m_V^2]K_0(\epsilon r)\varphi (r,z)_r^2\varphi (r,z)\}`$
$`={\displaystyle \frac{1}{(m_V^2+Q^2)^2}}{\displaystyle \frac{2\sqrt{Q^2}}{m_V}}{\displaystyle \frac{dr^2}{r^2}\frac{\sigma (x_{eff},r,𝐪)}{r^2}W_L(Q^2,r^2)}`$ (6)
where

$$\epsilon ^2=m_q^2+z(1z)Q^2,$$
(7)
$`\alpha _{em}`$ is the fine structure constant, $`N_c=3`$ is the number of colors, $`C_V=\frac{1}{\sqrt{2}},\frac{1}{3\sqrt{2}},\frac{1}{3},\frac{2}{3},\frac{1}{3}`$ for $`\rho ^0,\omega ^0,\varphi ^0,J/\mathrm{\Psi },\mathrm{{\rm Y}}`$ production, respectively and $`K_{0,1}(x)`$ are the modified Bessel functions. The detailed discussion and parameterization of the lightcone radial wave function $`\varphi (r,z)`$ of the $`q\overline{q}`$ Fock state of the vector meson is given in .

The terms $`ϵK_1(ϵr)_r\varphi (𝐫,z)`$ for $`T`$ polarization and $`K_0(ϵr)_r^2\mathrm{\Phi }(𝐫,z)`$ for $`L`$ polarization in the integrands of (5) and (6) represent the relativistic corrections which become important at large $`Q^2`$ and for the production of light vector mesons. For the production of heavy quarkonia, the nonrelativistic approximation can be used with a rather high accuracy .

For small dipole size and $`𝐪=0`$, in the leading-log $`\frac{1}{x}`$ approximation, the dipole cross section can be related to the gluon structure function $`G(x,q^2)`$ of the target nucleon through

$$\sigma (x,r)=\frac{\pi ^2}{3}r^2\alpha _s(r)G(x,q^2),$$
(8)
where the gluon structure function enters at the factorization scale, $`q^2\frac{B}{r^2}`$  with the parameter $`B10`$ .

The weight functions, $`W_T(Q^2,r^2)`$ and $`W_L(Q^2,r^2)`$, introduced in (5) and (6) have a smooth $`Q^2`$ behaviour  and are very convenient for the analysis of the scanning phenomenon. They are sharply peaked at $`rA_{T,L}/\sqrt{Q^2+m_V^2}`$. At small $`Q^2`$ the values of the scale parameter $`A_{T,L}`$ are close to $`A6`$, which follows from $`r_S=3/\epsilon `$ with the nonrelativistic choice $`z=\frac{1}{2}`$. In general, $`A_{T,L}6`$ and increases slowly with $`Q^2`$ . For production of light vector mesons the relativistic corrections play an important role especially at large $`Q^2m_V^2`$, and lead to $`Q^2`$ dependence of $`A_{L,T}`$ coming from the large-size asymmetric $`q\overline{q}`$ configurations: $`A_L(\rho ^0;Q^2=0)6.5,A_L(\rho ^0;Q^2=100\mathrm{GeV}^2)10,A_T(\rho ^0;Q^2=0)7,A_T(\rho ^0,Q^2=100\mathrm{GeV}^2)12`$ . Due to an extra factor $`z(1z)`$ in the integrand of (6) in comparison with (5), the contribution from asymmetric $`q\overline{q}`$\- configurations to the longitudinal meson production is considerably smaller.

The integrands in Eqs. (5) and (6) contain the dipole cross section, $`\sigma (\xi ,r,𝐪)`$. As was mentioned, due to a very slow onset of the pure perturbative region (see Eq. (2)), one can easily anticipate a contribution to the production amplitude coming from the semiperturbative and nonperturbative $`r\text{ }>R_c`$. Following the simplest assumption about an additive property of the perturbative and nonperturbative mechanism of interaction, we can represent the contribution of the bare pomeron exchange to $`\sigma (\xi ,r,𝐪)`$ as a sum of the perturbative and nonperturbative component111 additive property of a such decomposition of the dipole cross section has been detaily discussed in

$$\sigma (\xi ,r,𝐪)=\sigma _{pt}(\xi ,r,𝐪)+\sigma _{npt}(\xi ,r,𝐪),$$
(9)
with the parameterization of both components at small $`𝐪`$

$$\sigma _{pt,npt}(\xi ,r,𝐪)=\sigma _{pt,npt}(\xi ,r,𝐪=0)\mathrm{exp}\left(\frac{1}{2}B_{pt,npt}(\xi ,r)𝐪^\mathrm{𝟐}\right).$$
(10)
Here $`\sigma _{pt,npt}(\xi ,r,𝐪=0)=\sigma _{pt,npt}(\xi ,r)`$ represent the contribution of the perturbative and nonperturbative mechanisms to the $`q\overline{q}`$-nucleon interaction cross section, respectively, $`B_{pt,npt}(\xi ,r)`$ are corresponding diffraction slopes.

A small real part of production amplitudes can be taken in the form

$$\mathrm{Re}(\xi ,r)=\frac{\pi }{2}\frac{}{\xi }\mathrm{Im}(\xi ,r).$$
(11)
and can be easily included in the production amplitudes (5),(6) using substitution

$$\sigma (x_{eff},r,𝐪)\left(1i\frac{\pi }{2}\frac{}{logx_{eff}}\right)\sigma (x_{eff},r)=\left[1i\alpha _V(x_{eff},r)\right]\sigma (x_{eff},r,𝐪)$$
(12)
The formalism for calculation of $`\sigma _{pt}(\xi ,r)`$ in the leading-log $`s`$ approximation was developed in . The nonperturbative contribution, $`\sigma _{npt}(\xi ,r)`$, to the dipole cross section was used in Refs.  where we assume that this soft nonperturbative component of the pomeron is a simple Regge pole with the intercept, $`\mathrm{\Delta }_{npt}=0`$. The particular form together with assumption of the energy independent $`\sigma _{npt}(\xi =\xi _0,r)=\sigma _{npt}(r)`$ ($`\xi _0`$ corresponds to boundary condition for the gBFKL evolution, $`\xi _0=log(1/x_0)`$, $`x_0=0.03`$) allows one to successfully describe  the proton structure function at very small $`Q^2`$, the real photoabsorption  and diffractive real and virtual photoproduction of light  and heavy  vector mesons. A larger contribution of the nonperturbative pomeron exchange to $`\sigma _{tot}(\gamma p)`$ vs. $`\sigma _{tot}(\gamma ^{}p)`$ can, for example, explain a much slower rise with energy of the real photoabsorption cross section, $`\sigma _{tot}(\gamma p)`$, in comparison with $`F_2(x,Q^2)\sigma _{tot}(\gamma ^{}p)`$ observed at HERA . Besides, the reasonable form of this soft cross section, $`\sigma _{npt}(r)`$, was confirmed in the process of the first determination of the dipole cross section from the data on vector meson electroproduction . The so extracted dipole cross section is in a good agreement with the dipole cross section obtained from the gBFKL dynamics . Thus, this nonperturbative component of the pomeron exchange plays a dominant role at low NMC energies in the production of the light vector mesons, where the scanning radius, $`r_S`$ (2), is large. However, the perturbative component of the pomeron become more important with the rise of energy also in the nonperturbative region of the dipole sizes.

If one starts with the familiar impact-parameter representation for amplitude of elastic scattering of the color dipole

$$\mathrm{Im}(\xi ,r,\stackrel{}{q})=2d^2\stackrel{}{b}\mathrm{exp}(i\stackrel{}{q}\stackrel{}{b})\mathrm{\Gamma }(\xi ,\stackrel{}{r},\stackrel{}{b}),$$
(13)
then the diffraction slope $`B=2d\mathrm{log}\mathrm{Im}/dq^2|_{q=0}`$ equals

$$B(\xi ,r)=\frac{1}{2}\stackrel{}{b}^2=\lambda (\xi ,r)/\sigma (\xi ,r),$$
(14)
where

$$\lambda (\xi ,r)=d^2\stackrel{}{b}\stackrel{}{b}^2\mathrm{\Gamma }(\xi ,\stackrel{}{r,}\stackrel{}{b}).$$
(15)
The generalization of the color dipole factorization formula (3) to the diffraction slope of the reaction $`\gamma ^{}pVp`$ reads:

$$B(\gamma ^{}V,\xi ,Q^2)\mathrm{Im}(\gamma ^{}V,\xi ,Q^2,\stackrel{}{q}=0)=\underset{0}{\overset{1}{}}𝑑zd^2\stackrel{}{r}\lambda (\xi ,r)\mathrm{\Psi }_V^{}(r,z)\mathrm{\Psi }_\gamma ^{}(r,z).$$
(16)
The diffraction cone in the color dipole gBFKL approach for production of vector mesons has been detaily studied in . Here we only present the salient feature of the color diffraction slope reflecting the presence of the geometrical contribution from beam dipole - $`r^2/8`$ and the contribution from the target proton size - $`R_N^2/3`$:

$$B(\xi ,r)=\frac{1}{8}r^2+\frac{1}{3}R_N^2+2\alpha _{𝐈𝐏}^{}(\xi \xi _0)+𝒪(R_c^2),$$
(17)
where $`R_N`$ is the radius of the proton. For electroproduction of light vector mesons the scanning radius is larger than the correlation one $`r\text{ }>R_c`$ even for $`Q^2\text{ }<50`$ GeV2 and one recovers a sort of additive quark model, in which the uncorrelated gluonic clouds build up around the beam and target quarks and antiquarks and the term $`2\alpha _{𝐈𝐏}^{}(\xi \xi _0)`$ describe the familiar Regge growth of diffraction slope for the quark-quark scattering. The geometrical contribution to the diffraction slope from the target proton size, $`\frac{1}{3}R_N^2`$, persists for all the dipole sizes, $`r\text{ }>R_c`$ and $`r\text{ }<R_c`$. The last term in (17) is also associated with the proton size and is negligibly small.

The soft pomeron and diffractive scattering of large color dipole has been detaily studied in the paper . Here we assume the conventional Regge rise of the diffraction slope for the soft pomeron ,

$$B_{npt}(\xi ,r)=\mathrm{\Delta }B_d(r)+\mathrm{\Delta }B_N+2\alpha _{npt}^{^{}}(\xi \xi _0),$$
(18)
where $`\mathrm{\Delta }B_d(r)`$ and $`\mathrm{\Delta }B_N`$ stand for the contribution from the beam dipole and target nucleon size. As a guidance we take the experimental data on the pion-nucleon scattering , which suggest $`\alpha _{npt}^{}=0.15`$ GeV-2. In (18) the proton size contribution is

$$\mathrm{\Delta }B_N=\frac{1}{3}R_N^2,$$
(19)
and the beam dipole contribution has been proposed to have a form

$$B_d(r)=\frac{r^2}{8}\frac{r^2+aR_N^2}{3r^2+aR_N^2},$$
(20)
where $`a`$ is a phenomenological parameter, $`a1`$. We take $`\mathrm{\Delta }B_N=4.8\mathrm{GeV}^2`$. Then the pion-nucleon diffraction slope is reproduced with reasonable values of the parameter $`a`$ in the formula (20): $`a=0.9`$ for $`\alpha _{npt}^{}=0.15`$ GeV-2 .

Using the expressions (5) and (6) for the $`T`$ and $`L`$ production amplitudes in conjunction with Eqs. (9) and (10), we can calculate the differential cross section of vector meson electroproduction as a function of $`t`$.

Following the simple geometrical properties of the gBFKL diffraction slope, $`B(\xi ,r)`$, (see Eq. (17) and ), one can express its energy dependence through the energy dependent effective Regge slope, $`\alpha _{eff}^{}(\xi ,r)`$

$$B_{pt}(\xi ,r)\frac{1}{3}<R_N^2>+\frac{1}{8}r^2+2\alpha _{eff}^{}(\xi ,r)(\xi \xi _0).$$
(21)
The effective Regge slope, $`\alpha _{eff}^{}(\xi ,r)`$, varies with energy differently at different size of the color dipole ; at fixed scanning radius and/or $`Q^2+m_V^2`$, it decreases with energy. At fixed rapidity $`\xi `$ and/or $`x_{eff}`$ (4), $`\alpha _{eff}^{}(\xi ,r)`$ rises with $`r\text{ }<1.5`$ fm. At fixed energy, it is a flat function of the scanning radius. At the asymptotically large $`\xi `$ ($`W`$), $`\alpha _{eff}^{}(\xi ,r)\alpha _{𝐈𝐏}^{}=0.072`$ GeV-2. At the lower and HERA energies, the subasymptotic $`\alpha _{eff}^{}(\xi ,r)(0.150.20)`$ GeV-2 and is very close to $`\alpha _{soft}^{}`$ known from the Regge phenomenology of soft scattering. It means, that the gBKFL dynamics predicts a substantial rise with the energy and dipole size, $`r`$, of the diffraction slope, $`B(\xi ,r)`$, in accordance with the energy and dipole size dependence of the effective Regge slope, $`\alpha _{eff}^{}(\xi ,r)`$ and due to a presence of the geometrical component, $`r^2`$, in (17) and (18).

Now we will concentrate on the production of radially excited $`2S`$ light vector mesons and will study the differential cross section $`d\sigma /dt`$ as a function of $`t`$. The most important feature of the production of $`V^{}(2S)`$ vector mesons is the node effect \- the $`Q^2`$ and energy dependent cancellations from the soft (large size) and hard (small size) contributions, i.e. from the region above and below the node position, $`r_n`$, to the $`V^{}(2S)`$ production amplitude. The strong $`Q^2`$ dependence of these cancellations comes from the scanning phenomenon (2) when the scanning radius $`r_S`$ for some value of $`Q^2`$ is close to $`r_nR_V`$ ($`R_V`$ is the vector meson radius). The energy dependence of the node effect is due to the different energy dependence of the dipole cross section at small ($`r<R_V`$) and large ($`r>R_V`$) dipole sizes. The strong node effect in production of radially excited light vector mesons leading to an anomalous $`Q^2`$ and energy dependence of the production cross section was demonstrated in Ref. 222 Manifestations of the node effect in electroproduction on nuclei were discussed earlier, see  and  Note, that the predictive power is weak and is strongly model dependent in the region of $`Q^2`$ and energy where the node effect becomes exact.

There are several reasons to expect that, for the production of $`2S`$ light vector mesons, the node effect depends on the polarization of the virtual photon and of the produced vector meson . First, the wave functions of $`T`$ and $`L`$ polarized (virtual) photon are different. Second, different regions of $`z`$ contribute to the $`_T`$ and $`_L`$. Third, different scanning radii for production of $`T`$ and $`L`$ polarized vector mesons and different energy dependence of $`\sigma (\xi ,r)`$ at these scanning radii lead to a different $`Q^2`$ and energy dependence of the node effect in production of $`T`$ and $`L`$ polarized $`V^{}(2S)`$ vector mesons. Not so for the nonrelativistic limit of heavy quarkonia where the node effect is very weak and is approximately polarization independent. There is a weak polarization dependence of the node effect which is the most marginal for $`\mathrm{\Psi }^{}`$ production  and this weak node effect still leads to a nonmonotonic $`Q^2`$ dependence of the diffraction slope. For $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}^{}`$ production the node effect is negligibly small and is polarization independent with very high accuracy.

There are two possible scenarios for the node effect which can occur in the $`2S`$ production amplitude; the undercompensation and the overcompensation scenario . In the undercompensation case, the $`2S`$ production amplitude $`V^{}(2S)|\sigma (\xi ,r)|\gamma ^{}`$ is dominated by the positive contribution coming from small dipole sizes, $`r\text{ }<r_n`$ ($`r_n`$ is the node position), and the $`V(1S)`$ and $`V^{}(2S)`$ photoproduction amplitudes have the same sign. This scenario corresponds namely to the production of $`2S`$ heavy vector mesons, $`\mathrm{\Psi }^{}(2S)`$ and $`\mathrm{{\rm Y}}^{}(2S)`$. In the overcompensation case, the $`2S`$ production amplitude $`V^{}(2S)|\sigma (\xi ,r)|\gamma ^{}`$ is dominated by the negative contribution coming from large dipole sizes, $`r\text{ }>r_n`$, and the $`V(1S)`$ and $`V^{}(2S)`$ photoproduction amplitudes have the opposite sign.

The anomalous properties of the diffraction slope come from the expression (16) and will be presented elsewhere . The matrix element on l.h.s of (16) represents the well known production amplitude $`V(V^{})|\sigma (\xi ,r)|\gamma ^{}`$. As was mentioned, the $`1S`$ production amplitude is dominated by contribution from dipole size corresponding to the scanning radius $`r_S3/ϵ`$ (2) with the scale parameter $`A6`$ at $`Q^2=0`$ slightly dependent on $`Q^2`$ . However, due to $`r^2`$ behaviour of the slope parameter (see (17) and (18)), the integrand of the matrix element on the r.s.h of Eq. (16), $`V(1S)|\sigma (\xi ,r)B(\xi ,r)|\gamma ^{}`$, is $`r^5\mathrm{exp}(ϵr)`$ and is peaked by $`rr_B=5/ϵ=5/3r_S`$.

The node of the radial wave function of the $`2S`$ states leads to peculiarities in $`t`$ dependence of the differential cross section. Following the simple geometrical properties of the diffraction slope (17), (18), because of $`r^2`$ behaviour, the large size negative contribution to the production amplitude from the region above the node position corresponds to larger value of the diffraction slope than small size contribution from the region below the node position. It means, that the negative contribution to the $`V^{}(2S)`$ production amplitude coming from the region above the node position, $`r\text{ }>r_n`$, has a steeper $`t`$ dependence than the positive contribution coming from the small size dipoles, $`r\text{ }>r_n`$. It can be expressed in a somewhat demonstrative form as a $`t`$\- dependent production amplitude:

$$(t)=\alpha \mathrm{exp}(\frac{1}{2}B_1t)\beta \mathrm{exp}(\frac{1}{2}B_2t),$$
(22)
where $`\alpha `$ and $`\beta `$ represent the contribution to the matrix element from the region below and above the node position, respectively. In (22) $`B_1`$ and $`B_2`$ are the effective diffraction slopes, which correspond to integration over dipole size $`r`$ from 0 to the position of the node $`r_n`$ and above the node position. Thus, the inequality $`\alpha >\beta `$ corresponds to the undercompensation whereas $`\alpha <\beta `$ to the overcompensation regime. The destructive interference of these two amplitudes results in a decrease of the effective diffraction slope for the $`V^{}(2S)`$ meson production for small $`t`$ in contrary with the familiar increase for the $`V(1S)`$ meson production. Such a situation is shown in Fig. 1, where we present the model predictions for the differential cross section as a function of $`t`$ for production of $`V(1S)`$ and $`V^{}(2S)`$ mesons at different c.m.s. energies $`W`$ and at $`Q^2=0`$. Real photoproduction measures the purely transverse cross section. As was mentioned in the paper , using our wave functions, at $`W\text{ }<150`$ GeV for $`\rho ^{}(2S)`$ production and at $`W\text{ }<20`$ GeV for $`\varphi ^{}(2S)`$ production, the forward production amplitude (3) is in undercompensation regime whereas the matrix element $`<V^{}(2S)|\sigma (\xi ,r)B(\xi ,r)|\gamma >`$ on r.h.s. of Eq. (16) is in the overcompensation regime. As the result we predict the negative valued diffraction slope at $`t=0`$ and $`Q^2=0`$ For this reason and due to destructive interference of two contributions to the production amplitude (22) with different $`t`$ dependencies, the differential cross section firstly rises with $`t`$, flattens at $`t(0.10.2)`$ GeV2 having a maximum. At large $`t`$, the node effect is weak in $`t`$\- dependent production amplitude because of a steeper $`t`$ dependence from the large size dipoles and the differential cross section falls down following the differential cross section for $`V(1S)`$ production. The position of the maximum can be roughly evaluated from (22) as follows:

$$t_{max}\frac{1}{BA}log\left[\frac{\beta ^2}{\alpha ^2}\frac{B^2}{A^2}\right],$$
(23)
with the supplementary condition

$$\frac{\beta }{\alpha }>\frac{A}{B}$$
(24)
where $`A=2B_1`$ and $`B=2B_2`$, $`A<B`$. If the condition (24) is not fulfilled the differential cross section $`d\sigma /dt`$ for production of $`V^{}(2S)`$ vector mesons has no maximum and has a standard monotonous $`t`$\- behaviour like for production of $`V(1S)`$ mesons.

The nonmonotonous $`t`$\- behaviour of the differential cross section for $`\rho ^{}(2S)`$ and $`\varphi ^{}(2S)`$ production in the photoproduction limit is strikingly different from the familiar decrease with $`t`$ of the differential cross section for the $`\rho ^0(1S)`$ and $`\varphi ^0(1S)`$ real photoproduction. Here we can not insist on the precise form of the $`t`$ dependence of the differential cross section, the main emphasis is on the likely pattern of the $`t`$ dependence coming from the node effect.

At larger energies, $`W\text{ }>150`$ GeV for the $`\rho ^{}(2S)`$ photoproduction and $`W\text{ }>30`$ GeV for $`\varphi ^{}(2S)`$ photoproduction, the node effect becomes weaker and we predict the positive valued diffraction slope at $`t=0`$ because of positive valued matrix elements $`<V^{}(2S)|\sigma (\xi ,r)|\gamma >`$ (3) and $`<V^{}(2S)|\sigma (\xi ,r)B(\xi ,r)|\gamma >`$ on the r.h.s. of Eq. (16). For this reason, the nonmonotonous $`t`$ dependence of the differential cross section is changed for the monotonous one, but still the effective diffraction slope decreases towards small $`t`$ in contrary to the familiar increase for the $`\rho ^0(1S)`$ and $`\rho ^0(1S)`$ photoproduction (see Fig. 1).

Because of a possible overcompensation scenario for the longitudinally polarized $`\rho ^{}(2S)`$ and $`\varphi ^{}(2S)`$ mesons in the forward direction and at small $`Q^2`$ (see Ref. ), we present in Fig. 2 the model predictions for the differential cross sections as a function of $`t`$ at different energies $`W`$ and at fixed $`Q^2=0.5`$ GeV2 for the production of $`T`$, $`L`$ polarized and polarization unseparated $`\rho ^{}(2S)`$ and $`\varphi ^{}(2S)`$ mesons. As it was mentioned above, at $`Q^2=0.5`$ GeV2, the node effect becomes weaker, the amplitude for $`\rho _T^{}(2S)`$ and $`\varphi _T^{}(2S)`$ production at $`t=0`$ is in undercompensation regime and the corresponding slope parameter $`B(V_T^{}(2S))`$ is positive valued because of the positive valued matrix element $`<V^{}(2S)|\sigma (r,z)B(r,z)|\gamma ^{}>`$ on the r.s.h. of Eq. (16). For this reason, we predict the standard decrease of $`d\sigma \left(\gamma ^{}V_T^{}(2S)\right)/dt`$ with $`t`$ (see bottom boxes in Fig. 2). The above mentioned maximum of $`d\sigma /dt`$ for the undercompensation regime is absent due to a weaker node effect and because the condition (24) is not fulfilled.

However, for $`Q^2\text{ }<0.5`$ GeV2, the amplitude for $`\rho _L^{}(2S)`$ and $`\varphi _L^{}(2S)`$ production in forward direction, $`(t=0)`$ (and the matrix element $`<V_L^{}(2S)|\sigma (r,z)B(r,z)|\gamma ^{}>`$ as well), is still in overcompensation regime with the positive valued diffraction slope $`B(V_L^{}(2S))`$ at small energies $`W\text{ }<20`$ GeV. It follows in anomalous $`t`$ dependence of $`d\sigma \left(\gamma ^{}V_L^{}(2S)\right)/dt`$ shown if Fig. 2 (middle boxes). With the increase of $`t`$, because of the above mentioned interference of two different contributions to the production amplitude with different $`t`$ dependencies, one encounters the exact cancellation of the large and small distance contributions. This fact corresponds to the exact node effect at some $`tt_{min}`$. Thus, the differential cross section firstly falls down rapidly with $`t`$, have a minimum at $`tt_{min}`$, following by a rise when the overcompensation scenario of $`t`$\- dependent production amplitude is changed for the undercompensation one and the slope parameter becomes to be negative. At larger $`t`$, further pattern of $`t`$\- behaviour is practically the same as the nonmonotonous $`t`$ dependence of $`d\sigma \left(\gamma ^{}V_T^{}(2S)\right)/dt`$ at $`Q^2=0`$ (see Fig. 1).

The position of the minimum, $`t_{min}`$, in differential cross section is model dependent and can be roughly estimated from (22)

$$t_{min}\frac{1}{BA}log\left[\frac{\beta ^2}{\alpha ^2}\right].$$
(25)
With our wave functions we find $`t_{min}0.03`$ GeV2 for $`\rho _L^{}(2S)`$ production and $`t_{min}0.05`$ GeV2 for $`\varphi _L^{}(2S)`$ production at $`Q^2=0.5`$ GeV2 and at $`W=5`$ GeV. However, we can not exclude a possibility that this minimum will take a place at larger $`t`$. At $`Q^2<0.5`$ GeV2, $`t_{min}`$ will be also located at larger values of $`t`$. At higher energy, the position of $`t_{min}`$ is shifted to a smaller value of $`t`$ unless the exact node effect is reached at $`t=0`$. At still larger energy, when longitudinally polarized $`2S`$ production amplitude is in undercompensation regime, this minimum disappears and we predict the pattern of $`t`$\- behaviour of $`L`$ differential cross section very similar to one like nonmonotonous $`t`$ dependence of $`d\sigma \left(\gamma V_T^{}(2S)\right)/dt`$ in the photoproduction limit described in Fig. 1. These predicted anomalies can be tested at HERA measuring the diffractive electroproduction of $`2S`$ radially excited light vector mesons in the separate polarizations, $`T`$ and $`L`$.

Conclusions

We study the diffractive photo- and electroproduction of ground state $`V(1S)`$ and radially excited $`V^{}(2S)`$ vector mesons within the color dipole gBFKL dynamics with the main emphasis related to the differential cross section $`d\sigma /dt`$, which is connected with the diffraction slope. There are two main consequences of vector meson production coming from the gBFKL dynamics. First, the energy dependence of the $`1S`$ vector meson production is controlled by the energy dependence of the dipole cross section which is steeper for smaller dipole sizes. The energy dependence of the diffraction slope for $`V(1S)`$ production is given by the effective Regge slope with a small variation with energy. Second the $`Q^2`$ dependence of the $`1S`$ vector meson production is controlled by the shrinkage of the transverse size of the virtual photon and the small dipole size dependence of the color dipole cross section. The $`Q^2`$ behaviour of the diffraction slope is given by the simple geometrical properties, $`r^2`$, coming from the color dipole gBFKL phenomenology of the slope parameter.

The diffraction slope for the production of $`2S`$ light vector mesons shows very interesting and anomalous behaviour as function of c.m.s. energy $`W`$ and $`Q^2`$ and will be detaily analysed elsewhere . As a consequence of the node in $`2S`$ radial wave function, we predict a strikingly different $`t`$ dependence of the differential cross section for production of $`V^{}(2S)`$ vs. $`V(1S)`$ mesons. The origin is in destructive interference of the large distance negative contribution to the production amplitude from the region above the node position with a steeper $`t`$\- dependence and small distance positive contribution to the production amplitude from the region below the node position with a weaker $`t`$\- dependence. As a result, at $`Q^2=0`$ (when the $`T`$ polarized $`V_T^{}(2S)`$ mesons are only produced) as a consequence of the undercompensation scenario for $`T`$ polarized forward production amplitude, we predict a nonmonotonous $`t`$\- dependence of $`d\sigma \left(\gamma V_T^{}(2S)\right)/dt`$ and a decreasing effective diffraction slope for $`V_T^{}(2S)`$ mesons towards to negative values at small $`t`$ in contrary with the familiar increase for the $`V(1S)`$ mesons. The differential cross section $`d\sigma \left(\gamma V_T^{}(2S)\right)/dt`$ firstly rises with $`t`$ having a maximum at $`tt_{max}`$ given by Eq.(23). At large $`t`$ when the node effect is weaker $`d\sigma (\gamma V_T^{}(2S))/dt`$ has the standard monotonous $`t`$\- behaviour like for production of $`V(1S)`$ vector mesons. The position of the maximum is model dependent and is shifted to smaller values of $`t`$ with rising energy and $`Q^2`$ due to a weaker node effect.

For production of $`L`$ polarized $`V_L^{}(2S)`$ mesons, there is overcompensation at $`t=0`$ leading to an exact cancellation of the positive contribution from large size dipoles and the negative contribution from small size dipoles to the production amplitude and to a minimum of the differential cross section at some value of $`tt_{min}`$. The position of $`t_{min}`$ is given by Eq. (25), is energy dependent and leads to a complicated anomalous $`t`$ dependence of $`d\sigma \left(\gamma ^{}V_L^{}(2S)\right)/dt`$ at fixed $`Q^2`$. Thus, $`d\sigma \left(\gamma ^{}V_L^{}(2S)\right)/dt`$ firstly falls down with $`t`$ having a minimum at $`tt_{min}`$ when the overcompensation scenario is changed for the undercompensation one. The following pattern of $`t`$\- behaviour is then the same like for $`d\sigma (\gamma V_T^{}(2S))/dt`$ at $`Q^2=0`$. These anomalies are also energy and $`Q^2`$\- dependent and can be studied at HERA.

The experimental investigation of $`t`$\- dependent differential cross section for real photoproduction ($`Q^2=0`$) of $`V^{}(2S)`$ mesons at fixed target and HERA experiments, offers an unique possibility to make a choice between the undercompensation and overcompensation scenarios. The presence of the minimum in $`t`$\- dependent $`d\sigma (\gamma V^{}(2S))/dt`$ in a broad energy region from small to large energies, corresponds to the overcompensation scenario, whereas its absence corresponds to the undercompensation scenario.

The position of the node in the radial $`(2S)`$ wave function can be tested also by the vector meson data with separate polarizations $`(L)`$ and $`(T)`$ at $`Q^2>0`$. The existence of the minimum in $`t`$\- dependent differential cross section is connected again with the overcompensation scenario in $`(2S)`$ production amplitude whereas the undercompensation scenario reflects the maximum of $`d\sigma /dt`$ and/or the standard monotonous $`t`$\- behaviour.

Figure captions:

* \- The color dipole model predictions for the differential cross sections $`d\sigma (\gamma ^{}V(V^{}))/dt`$ for the real photoproduction ($`Q^2=0`$) of the $`\rho ^0,\rho ^{}(2S),\varphi ^0`$ and $`\varphi ^{}(2S)`$ at different values of the c.m.s. energy $`W`$.
* \- The color dipole model predictions for the differential cross sections $`d\sigma _{L,T}(\gamma ^{}V^{})/dt`$ for transversely (T) (top boxes) and longitudinally (L) (middle boxes) polarized radially excited $`\rho ^{}(2S)`$, $`\varphi ^{}(2S)`$ and for the polarization-unseparated $`d\sigma (\gamma ^{}V^{})/dt=d\sigma _T(\gamma ^{}V^{})/dt+ϵd\sigma _L(\gamma ^{}V^{})/dt`$ for $`ϵ=1`$ (bottom boxes) at $`Q^2=0.5`$ GeV2 and different values of the c.m.s. energy $`W`$.