Spin dependence of deep inelastic diffraction

Using a perturbative model for diffractive interactions, we derive an expression for the polarized diffractive structure function in the high energy limit. This structure function is given by the interference of diffractive amplitudes with polarized and unpolarized exchanges. For the polarized exchange we consider both two-gluon and quark-antiquark amplitudes. The polarized diffractive amplitude receives sizable contributions from non-strongly ordered regions in phase space, resulting in a double logarithmic enhancement at small x. The resummation of these double logarithmic terms is outlined. We also discuss the transition from our perturbative expression to the nonperturbative region. A first numerical estimate indicates that the perturbative contribution to the spin asymmetry is substantially larger than the nonperturbative one. Received: 7 July 1999 / Published online: 14 October 1999     

Can the Higgs be seen in rapidity gap events at the Tevatron or the LHC?

Double diffractive Higgs production at pp (or ) colliders continues to attract attention as a potential signal in the search for the boson. We present improved perturbative QCD estimates of the event rates for both the exclusive and inclusive double diffractive Higgs processes, paying particular attention to the survival probability of the rapidity gaps. We find that the major uncertainty is in the prediction for the survival probability associated with soft rescattering. We show that an analogous process, the double diffractive production of a pair of jets with large values of , has an event rate which makes it accessible at the Tevatron. Observation of this process can therefore be used as a luminosity monitor for two-gluon exchange processes, such as the production of a Higgs boson with rapidity gaps on either side. Received: 8 February 2000 / Published online: 14 April 2000     

A QCD analysis of diffractive deep-inelastic scattering data

We perform a novel type of analysis of diffractive deep-inelastic scattering data, in which the input parton distributions of the pomeron are parameterised using the perturbative QCD expressions. In particular, we treat individually the components of the pomeron of different size. We are able to describe simultaneously both the recent ZEUS and H1 diffractive data. In addition to the usual two-gluon model for the perturbative pomeron, we allow for the possibility that it may be made from two sea quarks.Received: 12 July 2004, Revised: 3 September 2004, Published online: 24 September 2004     

On inclusive gluon jet production off the nucleus in perturbative QCD

In the perturbative QCD approach single and double inclusive cross-sections for gluon production off the nucleus are studied by the relevant reggeized gluon diagrams. Various terms corresponding to emission of gluons from the triple pomeron vertex are found. Among them the term derived by Kovchegov and Tuchin emerges as a result of the transition from the diffractive to effective high-energy vertex. However it does not exhaust all the vertex contributions to the inclusive cross-section. In the double inclusive cross-section a contribution violating the naive AGK rules is found in which one gluon is emitted from the vertex and the other from one of the two pomerons below the vertex. But then this contribution is subdominant at high energies and taking it into account seems to be questionable.Received: 6 March 2005, Revised: 5 May 2005, Published online: 8 June 2005     

Correlator of heavy- quark currents at small q2 in the large-$\beta_0$ limit

The correlator of vector heavy-quark currents at small q ² is considered in the large- limit. The leading IR renormalon ambiguity of the sum of the perturbative series is canceled by the UV renormalon ambiguity of the gluon condensate. The asymptotic behavior of the perturbative series is obtained in a model-independent way, up to a single unknown normalization factor. Gluon-virtuality distribution functions for the perturbative correction are calculated.Received: 3 December 2004, Published online: 21 February 2005     

Probing the perturbative NLO parton evolution in the small-<Emphasis Type="Italic">x</Emphasis> region

A dedicated test of the perturbative QCD NLO parton evolution in the very small-x region is performed. We find a good agreement with recent precision HERA data for F ₂ ^p(x,Q ²), as well as with the present determination of the curvature of F ₂ ^p. Characteristically, perturbative QCD evolutions result in a positive curvature which increases as x decreases. Future precision measurements in the very small x-region, x < 10^-4, could provide a sensitive test of the range of validity of perturbative QCD.Received: 6 December 2004, Revised: 1 February 2005, Published online: 9 March 2005     

Diffractive vector mesons beyond the s-channel helicity conservation

We derive a full set, and determine the twist, of helicity amplitudes for diffractive production of light to heavy vector mesons in deep inelastic scattering. For large Q ² all helicity amplitudes but the double-flip are calculable in perturbative QCD and are proportional to the gluon structure function of the proton at a similar hardness scale. We find a substantial breaking of the s-channel helicity conservation, which must persist in real photoproduction also. Pis’ma Zh. éksp. Teor. Fiz. 68, No. 9, 667–673 (10 November 1998) Published in English in the original Russian journal. Edited by Steve Torstveit.     

Unified description of rapidity gaps and energy flows in DIS final states

We show that the ‘orthogonal’ characteristics of the observed rapidity gaps and large forward energy flows in deep inelastic scattering at HERA, can be described within a single framework. Our Monte Carlo model is based on perturbative QCD matrix elements and parton showers together with Lund string model hadronization, but has in addition a new mechanism for soft colour interactions which modifies the perturbative colour structure and thereby the hadronization. Effects of perturbative multiparton emission are investigated and the non-perturbative treatment of the proton remnant is discussed and comparison to the observed transverse energy flow is made. We investigate the resulting diffractive-like properties of the model; such as rapidity gap events, t- and M _X -distributions and the diffractive structure function in comparison to H1 data.     

Multiple-Pomeron splitting in QCD—A novel antishadowing effect in coherent dijet production on nuclei

We discuss the salient features of the Pomeron splitting mechanism for coherent diffraction of pions into hard dijets on nuclei. Our findings include antishadowing multiple-Pomeron splitting expansion for diffractive amplitudes, exact cancellation of nuclear attenuation, and broadening/antishadowing effects to leading twist and parameter-free perturbative calculation of nuclear-rescattering-driven higher twist correction. We comment on the pQCD interpretation of the E791 results on diffractive dijets.     

The partonic interpretation of reggeon theory models

We review the physical content of the two simplest models of reggeon field theory: namely the eikonal and the Schwimmer models. The AGK cutting rules are used to obtain the inclusive, the inelastic and the diffractive cross sections. The system of non-linear equations for these cross sections is written down and analytic expressions for its solution are obtained. We derive the rapidity gap dependence of the differential cross sections for diffractive dissociation in the Schwimmer model and in its eikonalized extension. The results are interpreted from the partonic viewpoint of the interaction at high energies. Received: 23 June 2005, Published online: 6 October 2005     

Physics with tagged forward protons at the LHC

We emphasize the importance of tagging the outgoing forward protons to sharpen the predictions for New Physics at the LHC (such as the diffractive production of a light Higgs boson). The rescattering effects lead to a rich distinctive structure of the cross section as a function of the transverse momenta of the protons. We show that a study of the correlations between the proton transverse momenta for double-diffractive production of central dijets will provide a detailed check of the whole diffractive formalism. Adopting a perturbative two-gluon structure of the Pomeron, we emphasize that quarkonium production, via Pomeron-Pomeron fusion, is strongly suppressed. This offers a favourable production mechanism for non- states, such as glueballs. Received: 15 March 2002 / Published online: 21 June 2002     

Hard diffractive photon-proton scattering at large |t|

We propose to test perturbative QCD(pQCD) in the Regge limit by means of diffractive photon scattering, , at large and very high energies, . The helicity amplitudes of this process were calculated using the Lipatov solution of the BFKL equation for . We found that the perturbatively calculated cross section for this process is comparable in magnitude to the cross section for photoproduction assuming similar kinematics. Received: 9 September 1998 / Revised version: 2 October 1998 / Published online: 14 January 1999     

Evidence for factorization breaking in diffractive low-Q2 dijet production

We calculate diffractive dijet production in deep-inelastic scattering at next-to-leading order of perturbative QCD, including contributions from direct and resolved photons, and compare our predictions to preliminary data from the H1 Collaboration at DESY HERA. In contrast to recent experimental claims, evidence for factorization breaking is found only for resolved, and not direct, photon contributions. No evidence is found for large normalization uncertainties in diffractive parton densities. The results confirm theoretical expectations for the (non)cancellation of soft singularities in diffractive scattering as well as previous results for (almost) real photoproduction.     

Rescattering effects in hadron-nucleus and heavy-ion collisions

We review the extension of the factorization formalism of perturbative QCD to coherent soft rescattering associated with hard scattering in high energy nuclear collisions. We emphasize the ability to quantify high order corrections and the predictive power of the factorization approach in terms of universal non-perturbative matrix elements. Although coherent rescattering effects are power suppressed by the hard scales of the scattering, they are enhanced by the nuclear size and could play an important role in understanding the novel nuclear dependence observed in high energy nuclear collisions.Arrival of the final proofs: 22 July 2005PACS: 12.38.Bx, 12.39.St, 24.85. + p     

The relation between the Good–Walker and triple-regge formalisms for diffractive excitation

In this Letter we analyze the relation between the triple-pomeron and Good–Walker formalisms for diffractive excitation in DIS and hadronic collisions. In both approaches gap events are interpreted as the shadow of absorption into inelastic channels. We here argue that the two formalisms are just different views of the same phenomenon. We first demonstrate how this relation works in a simple toy model, and then show how the relevant features of the toy model are also realized in real perturbative QCD.     

Measurement of dijet cross sections in <Emphasis Type="Italic">ep</Emphasis> interactions with a leading neutron at HERA

Measurements are reported of the production of dijet events with a leading neutron in ep interactions at HERA. Differential cross sections for photoproduction and deep inelastic scattering are presented as a function of several kinematic variables. Leading order QCD simulation programs are compared with the measurements. Models in which the real or virtual photon interacts with a parton of an exchanged pion are able to describe the data. Next-to-leading order perturbative QCD calculations based on pion exchange are found to be in good agreement with the measured cross sections. The fraction of leading neutron dijet events with respect to all dijet events is also determined. The dijet events with a leading neutron have a lower fraction of resolved photon processes than do the inclusive dijet data.Received: 31 January 2005, Revised: 7 March 2005, Published online: 28 April 2005     

High scale perturbative gauge coupling in R-parity conserving SUSY <Emphasis Type="Italic">SO</Emphasis>(10) with longer proton lifetime

It is well known that in single step breaking of R-parity conserving SUSY SO(10) that needs the Higgs representations , the GUT gauge coupling violates the perturbative constraint at mass scales a few times larger than the GUT scale. Therefore, if the SO(10) gauge coupling is to remain perturbative up to the Planck scale ( GeV), the scale M_U of the GUT symmetry breaking is to be bounded from below. The bound depends upon specific Higgs representations used for SO(10) symmetry breaking but, as we find, cannot be lower than $1.5 \times 10$¹⁷ GeV. In order to obtain such a high unification scale we propose a two-step SO(10) breaking through SU(2)_L $\times$ SU(2)_R $\times$ U(1)_B-L $\times$SU(3)_C ( ) intermediate gauge symmetry. We estimate the potential threshold and gravitational corrections to the gauge coupling running and show that they can make the picture of perturbative gauge coupling running consistent at least up to the Planck scale. We also show that when by the Higgs representations , gravitational corrections alone with negligible threshold effects may guarantee such perturbative gauge coupling. The lifetime of the proton is found to increase by nearly 6 orders over the present experimental limit for . For the proton decay mediated by a dim = 5 operator a wide range of lifetimes is possible, extending from the current experimental limit up to values 2-3 orders longer. Received: 1 July 2005, Revised: 21 August 2005, Published online: 11 October 2005     

Measurement of beauty production at HERA using events with muons and jets

A measurement of the beauty production cross section in ep collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 319 GeV is presented. The data were collected with the H1 detector at the HERA collider in the years 1999-2000. Events are selected by requiring the presence of jets and muons in the final state. Both the long lifetime and the large mass of b-flavoured hadrons are exploited to identify events containing beauty quarks. Differential cross sections are measured in photoproduction, with photon virtualities Q² < 1 GeV², and in deep inelastic scattering, where 2 < Q² < 100 GeV². The results are compared with perturbative QCD calculations to leading and next-to-leading order. The predictions are found to be somewhat lower than the data.Received: 7 February 2005, Revised: 26 April 2005, Published online: 31 May 2005     

Central exclusive production of dijets at hadronic colliders

In view of the recent diffractive dijet data from CDF run II, we critically re-evaluate the standard approach to the calculation of central production of dijets in quasi-elastic hadronic collisions. We find that the process is dominated by the non-perturbative region, and that even perturbative ingredients, such as the Sudakov form factor, are not under theoretical control. Comparison with data allows us to fix some of the uncertainties. Although we focus on dijets, our arguments apply to other high-mass central systems, such as the Higgs boson. Permanent address: Marianopolis College, 4873 Westmount Ave., Montréal, QC, H3Y 1X9, Canada.