Diffractive dissociation in oniu-nucleus scattering from a partonic picture

Abstract

We present a partonic picture for diffractive onium-nucleus scattering in the large-number-of-color limit from which the distribution of rapidity gaps in a certain kinematic region can be deduced. This picture allows us to draw a parallel between diffractive dissociation and the genealogy of partonic evolution, the latter being essentially similar to a branching-diffusion process in which the branching is the parton splitting, and the diffusion occurs in the transverse momenta of the partons. In particular, we show that the rapidity gap distribution corresponds to the distribution of the splitting rapidity of the last common ancestor of the partons whose transverse momenta are smaller than the nuclear saturation scale, when the scattering process is viewed in the restframe of the nucleus. Numerical calculations are also implemented to support the analytical predictions.