`Exclusive Production of Heavy Vector Mesons'

Abstract:
The LHCb detector has the ability to measure the ultraperipheral production of
heavy vector mesons ( J/psi, Psi(2S), Upsilon) in the high-energy forward
region. These measurements complement and extend those of photoproduction taken
earlier at HERA. Perturbative QCD predictions for the production of J/psi and
Psi(2S) particles within the k_T factorisation framework are confronted with
recent data from the LHC. The theoretical issues faced during the analysis of
such processes are explored. An alternative approach, based on collinear
factorisation, is discussed and progress in the computation of the
next-to-leading order hard matrix elements is presented.