Measurement of coherent vector meson photoproduction from the deuteron at 6 to 11 GeV

Vector meson dominance (VMD) models have been successful in describing photon-hadron interactions at high energies. However, its applicability to low energies requires more investigation. Coherent vector meson photoproduction from the deuteron provides a great opportunity to study the limits of VMD and allows for the extraction of the total vector-meson-nucleon (V-N) cross section. The measurement of φ-N cross section is of particular interest due to the almost pure ss^- content of the φ meson. Quark exchange is suppressed by the OZI rule and the φ-N cross section is expected to be dominated by Pomeron exchange, which is otherwise difficult to study at low energies. In this talk, I will present the preliminary results of the differential cross section and decay angular distribution of the coherent photoproduction of ρ, ω and φ mesons from the deuteron at 6-11 GeV with linearly polarized photons and the GlueX detector at the Jefferson Lab in Hall D. These differential cross sections over a wide range of momentum transfer allow us to study V-N interactions in both single and double scattering processes. The spin structure of the reaction amplitude can be extracted from the decay angular distribution of the vector mesons.