Saturation in diffractive deep inelastic eA scattering

Abstract

In this paper we investigate the saturation physics in diffractive deep inelastic electron-ion scattering. We estimate the energy and nuclear dependence of the ratio ${\sigma }^{diff}/{\sigma }^{tot}$ and predict the $x_{\pom}$ and $\beta$ behavior of the nuclear diffractive structure function $F_{2,A}^{D(3)}(Q^2,\beta ,x_{IP})$. Moreover, we analyze the ratio $R_{A1,A2}^{diff}(Q^2,\beta ,x_{IP})=F_{2,A1}^{D(3)}/F_{2,A2}^{D(3)}$, which probes the nuclear dependence of the structure of the Pomeron. We show that saturation physics predicts that approximately 37 % of the events observed at eRHIC should be diffractive.

15 pages, 7 figures. Version to be published in the European Physical Journal C