Probing chiral-odd GPDs in diffractive electroproduction of two vector mesons

We consider the electroproduction of two vector mesons with a large rapidity gap between them on a nucleon target in the process γ∗N→ρ1ρ2N′. We calculate the Born term for this process within the collinear factorization framework. The resulting scattering amplitude may be represented as a convolution of an impact factor describing the γ∗→ρ1 transition and an amplitude describing the N→ρ2N′ transition. The latter amplitude is analogous to deeply virtual electroproduction of a meson, the virtual photon being replaced by two gluon (Pomeron) exchange. The long distance part of this amplitude is described by generalized parton distributions (GPD) and meson light-cone distributions. The selection of a transversely polarized vector meson ρ2 provides the first feasible selective access to chiral-odd GPD.