XYZ spectroscopy at electron-hadron facilities II: Semi-inclusive processes with pion exchange

Semi-inclusive processes are very promising to investigate $XYZ$ hadrons at the next generation of electron-hadron facilities, because they generally boast higher cross sections. We extend our formalism of exclusive photoproduction to semi-inclusive final states. The inclusive production cross sections for charged axial-vector $Z$ states from pion exchange are predicted. We isolate the contribution of $\Delta$ resonances at small missing mass. Production near threshold is shown to be enhanced roughly by a factor of two compared to the exclusive reaction. We benchmark the model with data of semi-inclusive $b_1^\pm$ production.