Can one probe the structure function of the pomeron?

Abstract

We discuss whether the diffractive structure functions defined by current experiments at HERA are indeed probing the partonic structure function of the pomeron. We observe that the {\it pseudorapidity} cuts commonly employed require that the struck parton in the pomeron be far off mass shell in sizeable regions of parameter space. As a result an interpretation in terms of constituent partons within the pomeron is inadequate. One may nevertheless use a partonic description for the {\it amplitude} for virtual photon-pomeron scattering to compute a diffractive structure function for pseudorapidity gap events. The resulting form may have significant scaling violation.

11 pages LaTeX, uses epsf, 5 eps figures appended as a uuencoded gzipped tarred file

References in corpus (4)

• First Measurement of the Deep--Inelastic Structure of Proton Diffraction
• Measurement of the diffractive structure function in deep inelastic scattering at HERA
• A PARTON MODEL FOR DIFFRACTIVE PROCESSES IN DEEP INELASTIC SCATTERING
• Diffractive production of dijets at HERA

Cited by in corpus (6)

• Gluon Radiation in Diffractive Electroproduction
• Hard scattering factorization and light cone hamiltonian approach to diffractive processes
• Deep Inelastic Scattering at HERA
• Diffractive Photoproduction in the Framework of Fracture Functions
• Pomerons and Jet Events at HERA
• Analysis of Rapidity Gap Cuts in Diffractive DIS