We propose to constrain the gluon Wigner distribution in the nucleon by studying the exclusive diffractive dijet production process in ultraperipheral proton-nucleus collisions (UPCs) at the RHIC and the LHC. Compared to the previous proposal in Ref. [Y. Hatta, B. W. Xiao, and F. Yuan, Phys. Rev. Lett. 116, 202301 (2016).] to study the same observable in lepton-nucleon scattering, the use of UPCs has a few advantages: not only is the cross section larger, but the extraction of the Wigner distribution from the data also becomes simpler, including its elliptic angular dependence. We compute the corresponding cross section and evaluate the coefficients using models which include the gluon saturation effects. A potential for the measurements of the Wigner distribution at current and future experimental facilities is also discussed.

• Received 15 June 2017

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.96.034009