RESONANCE PRODUCTION IN PERIPHERAL HEAVY-ION COLLISIONS

Heavy-ion collisions at ultrarelativistic energies may be used as a po werful source of photons and pomerons. We compute the rates for pseudo scalar meson production through two-photon and two-pomeron scattering, at energies that will be available at RHIC and LHC. Light mesons will mostly be produced by pomeron fusion at large rates, the two processe s are comparable for charmed mesons, while electromagnetic production will be dominant for bottom mesons. We discuss the possibility of obse rving the reaction gammagamma(PP) --> R --> gammagamma, and comment on the particular case where R could be a scalar resonance at 650 MeV.