Exclusive photoproduction of lepton pairs at LHC

Exclusive photoproduction of dileptons, gamma p ->l+ l- p, will be measured in ultraperipheral collisions at LHC. The mechanism where the lepton pair comes from a heavy timelike photon radiated from a quark interferes with the pure QED process gamma gamma ->l+ l- As an analog of deeply virtual Compton scattering, this timelike Compton scattering is a way to study generalized parton distributions in the nucleon or the nucleus. High energy kinematics will enable to focus on gluon distributions. Nuclear effects may be scrutinized in heavy ion collisions.