Electroproduction of Transversely Polarized Vector Mesons Via A Quantum Mechanical Anomaly

By explicit calculation we demonstrate that, in variance with the classical prediction, the leading twist contribution to the exclusive electroproduction of transversely polarized vector mesons from the nucleon does not vanish beyond the leading order in perturbation theory. This appears to be due to a quantum-mechanical anomaly, in the sense that a classical symmetry of the field theory is broken by quantum corrections.