A Consistent Next-to-Leading-Order QCD Calculation of Hadronic Diffractive Scattering

Abstract

We calculate the order alpha_s^2 and order alpha_s^3 QCD contributions to colour-singlet exchange in the leading log s approximation. We implement the resulting amplitude at the hadronic level and thus construct the QCD pomeron and odderon to this order of perturbation theory. We show that the structure of the hadronic form factors provides a natural mechanism through which the odderon gets suppressed at t=0 whereas it dominates the elastic cross section at large t. We also demonstrate that the inclusion of nonperturbative effects through a modification of the gluon propagator accelerates greatly the convergence of the log s expansion, although not enough to provide agreement with the data.