On exotic hybrid meson production in γ*γ collisions

We present a theoretical study of exotic hybrid meson (J^PC=1^- +) production in photon-photon collisions where one of the photons is deeply virtual, including twist two and twist three contributions. We calculate the cross section of this process, which turns out to be large enough to imply sizeable counting rates in the present high luminosity electron–positron colliders. We emphasize the importance of the πη decay channel for the detection of the hybrid meson candidate π₁(1400) and calculate the cross section and the angular distribution for π η pair production in the unpolarized case. This angular distribution is a useful tool for disentangling the hybrid meson signal from the background. Finally, we calculate the single spin asymmetry associated with one initial longitudinally polarized lepton.