Measurement of J/ψ-pair production in pp collisions at s = 13 TeV and study of gluon transverse-momentum dependent PDFs

The production cross-section of J/ψ pairs in proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of s = 13 TeV is measured using a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 4.2 fb⁻¹ collected by the LHCb experiment. The measurement is performed with both J/ψ mesons in the transverse momentum range 0 < p_T< 14 GeV/c and rapidity range 2.0 < y < 4.5. The cross-section of this process is measured to be 16.36 ± 0.28 (stat) ± 0.88 (syst) nb. The contributions from single-parton scattering and double-parton scattering are separated based on the dependence of the cross-section on the absolute rapidity difference ∆y between the two J/ψ mesons. The effective cross-section of double-parton scattering is measured to be σ_eff = 13.1 ± 1.8 (stat) ± 2.3 (syst) mb. The distribution of the azimuthal angle ϕ_CS of one of the J/ψ mesons in the Collins-Soper frame and the p_T-spectrum of the J/ψ pairs are also measured for the study of the gluon transverse-momentum dependent distributions inside protons. The extracted values of ⟨cos 2ϕ_CS⟩ and ⟨cos 4ϕ_CS⟩ are consistent with zero, but the presence of azimuthal asymmetry at a few percent level is allowed.