Gluonic effects in vector meson photoproduction at large momentum transfers

Non-perturbative QCD mechanisms are of fundamental importance in strong interaction physics. In particular, the flavor singlet axial anomaly leads to a gluonic pole mechanism which has been shown to explain the $\eta^{\prime}$ mass, violations of the OZI rule and more recently the proton spin. We show here that the interaction derived from the gluonic pole exchange explains the high momentum transfer behavior of the photoproduction cross sections of vector mesons at JLab energies.