Polarization in diffractive electroproduction of light vector mesons

We study in perturbative QCD the helicity ampltiudes of the process $\gamma^{*} p \to \rho p$ at large virtualities $Q$ of the photon $\gamma^{*}$. We estimate all spin flip amplitudes taking into account an important effect of the scale behaviour of the gluon density. The transition of a transverse virtual photon to a longitudinal vector meson is not small at typical HERA conditions. This helicity non-conserving amplitude leads by interference to a measurable effect in the distribution of the angle between the electron scattering and the meson production planes.