The exclusive photoproduction of upsilon state $\mathrm{\Upsilon }(1S)$ and its radially excited states $\mathrm{\Upsilon }(2S,3S)$ is investigated in the context of ultraperipheral collisions at the LHC energies. Predictions are presented for their production in proton-proton, proton-nucleus, and nucleus-nucleus collision at the energies available at the LHC Run 2. The rapidity and transverse-momentum distributions are shown, and the robustness of the model is tested against the experimental results considering $\psi (1S,2S)$ and $\mathrm{\Upsilon }(1S)$ states. The theoretical framework considered in the analysis is the light-cone color dipole formalism, which includes consistently parton saturation effects and nuclear shadowing corrections.

The exclusive photoproduction of $\mathrm{\Upsilon }(nS)$ states was calculated in ultraperipheral collisions for coherent and incoherent process in PbPb at $\sqrt{s_{NN}}=5.5\mathrm{TeV}$. Different dipole models were compared in the theoretical framework of light-cone color dipole formalism. Moreover, we calculated the differential cross section for the Upsilon states and their total cross section for two intervals of rapidity: $|y|\le 4$ 4 and $2\le \mathrm{y}\le 4.5$. A systematic study is done on the theoretical uncertainties associated to the production, and predictions are presented for the first time for the incoherent cross section of the radially excited states.

In this paper, we analyze the exclusive vector meson photoproduction in the recent run using xenon ions at energy of 5.44 TeV performed by the Large Hadron Collider. We focus on the ultraperipheral collisions and provide theoretical predictions for coherent and incoherent cross sections within the color dipole approach and gluon saturation framework. The rapidity distribution is investigated in both cases and comparison to other approaches available in the literature is completed. We show that the expected yields are enough to perform reliable cross section measurements for light mesons as ${\rho }^0$ and $\varphi$.

In this work we consider the QCD parton saturation models to describe soft interactions at the high energy limit. The total and elastic cross sections, as well as the elastic slope parameter, are obtained for proton-proton and pion-proton collisions and compared to recent experimental results. The analyses are done within the color dipole formalism, taking into account saturation models which have been tested against deep inelastic scattering data. The main point is that the matching between soft and hard interaction occurs in the saturation region which can be described by high density QCD approaches. Discussion is performed on the main theoretical uncertainties associated with calculations.