Does the hard pomeron obey Regge factorisation?

Abstract

While data for the proton structure function demand the presence of a hard-pomeron contribution even at quite small Q^2, previous fits to the pp and p\bar p total cross sections have found that in these there is little or no room for such a contribution. We re-analyse the data and show that itmay indeed be present and that, further, it probably obeys Regge factorisation: sigma^{gamma p}(s,Q_1^2)sigma^{gamma p}(s,Q_2^2)= sigma^{pp}(s)sigma^{gamma gamma}(s,Q_1^2,Q_2^2) for all values of Q_1^2 and Q_2^2.