Diffractive production and the total cross section in deep inelastic scattering

Abstract

We explore the consequences for diffractive production, gamma* p --> X p, in deep inelastic scattering at low values of x\sim Q^2/W^2 <<1 that follow from our recent representation of the total photoabsorption cross section, sigma_{gamma* p}, in the generalized vector dominance/ color dipole picture(GVD/CDP) that is based on the generic structure of the two-gluon-exchange from QCD. Sum rules are derived that relate the transverse and the longitudinal (virtual) photoabsorption cross section to diffractive forward production of q q-bar states that carry photon quantum numbers ("elastic diffraction"). Agreement with experiment in the W^2 and Q^2 dependence is found for M_X^2/Q^2<<1, where M_X is the mass of the produced system X. An additional component ("inelastic diffraction"), not actively contributing to the forward Compton amplitude, is needed for diffractive production at high values of M_X. Our previous theoretical representation of the total photoabsorption cross section sigma_{gamma* p}=sigma_{gamma* p}(eta), in terms of the scaling variable eta=(Q^2+m_0^2)/Lambda^2(W^2) is extended to include the entire kinematic domain, x=<0.1 and all Q^2 with Q^2>=0, where scaling in eta holds experimentally.

19 pages with 4 figures,(eps and ps files), Latex

References in corpus (5)

• Deep-Inelastic Inclusive ep Scattering at Low x and a Determination of alpha_s
• Measurement of the neutral current cross section and F2 structure function for deep inelastic e+p scattering at HERA
• The generalized vector dominance/colour-dipole picture of deep-inelastic scattering at low x
• Scaling in ${\gamma }^{\ast }p$ total cross sections, saturation and the gluon density
• Properties of hadronic final states in diffractive deep inelastic ep scattering at HERA

Cited by in corpus (10)

• The Color Dipole Picture of low-x DIS: Model-Independent and Model-Dependent Results
• The Color Dipole Picture and the ratio of R(W, Q) = sigma L/sigma T
• A Kinematically Complete Analysis of the CLAS data on the Proton Structure Function $F_2$ in a Regge-Dual model
• Geometric scaling in exclusive processes
• J/Psi photo- and electroproduction, the saturation scale and the gluon structure function
• Deep inelastic scattering and "elastic" diffraction
• The total virtual photoabsorption cross section, deeply virtual Compton scattering and vector-meson production
• The color dipole picture of low-x DIS
• Unique Prediction for High-Energy J/ψPhotoproduction: Color Transparency and Saturation
• Saturation in DIS at low x