The system of four reggeized gluons and the three-pomeron vertex in the high colour limit

The amplitude for 4 interacting reggeized gluons is studied in the high-colour limit. The leading order amplitude is explicitly shown to reduce to a pair of reggeons, i.e to a single BFKL pomeron. The next-to-leading order diffractive amplitude is found to split into a double pomeron exchange and triple pomeron contribution. The obtained three-pomeron vertex is different from the originally proposed in 2]. Received: 26 June 1997 / Revised version: 28 February 1998 / Published online: 3 September 1998