Production of orbitally excited vector mesons in diffractive DIS

Within the k_t-factorization framework, we study diffractive production of orbitally excited vector mesons and compare it with the production of radial excitations, focusing on the rho(1450)/rho(1700) case. At small Q^2, orbital excitation of light quarkonia is found to dominate over radial excitations in diffractive production. We predict strong suppression of the production of orbital excitations by longitudinal photons, which leads to very small sigma_L/sigma_T ratio. At small Q^2, the s-channel helicity violating transitions contribute \sim 10-15% of the transverse cross section and \sim 50% of the longitudinal cross section. We also study mixing between radial and orbital excitations and determine strategies towards clarification of S-wave/D-wave assignment to rho(1450) and rho(1700) mesons. The results are compared with the experimental data available, and predictions for future experiments are given.