Diffractive photoproduction of Z0 bosons in coherent interactions at CERN-LHC

Exclusive Z0 photoproduction at high energies in γp(A), pp and AA collisions is investigated within the color dipole formalism. We generalize the description of the deeply virtual Compton scattering (DVCS) process, which describes the HERA data quite well, for the production of Z0 bosons and estimate the total cross section for the exclusive process γ*h→Z0h (h=p,A) for different energies, photon virtualities and atomic numbers. As hadrons at collider energies are a source of Weizsaecker-Williams photons, we consider electromagnetic interactions in hadron-hadron collisions at Tevatron and LHC energies and estimate the rapidity distribution and the total cross section for Z0 production in the hh→hZ0h process. This may allow us to study, for instance, the physics of hadronic Z0 decays in a clean environment characterized by two rapidity gaps. Our results indicate that the experimental analyses of this process could be feasible in pp, but the physics scenario for AA collisions is not promising. (orig.)