Diffractive jet production in a simple model with applications to HERA

Abstract

In diffractive jet production, two high energy hadrons A and B collide and produce high transverse momentum jets, while hadron A is diffractively scattered. Ingelman and Schlein predicted this phenomenon. In their model, part of the longitudinal momentum transferred from hadron A is delivered to the jet system, part is lost. Lossless diffractive jet production, in which all of this longitudinal momentum is delivered to the jet system, has been discussed by Collins, Frankfurt, and Strikman. We study the structure of lossless diffractive jet production in a simple model. The model suggests that the phenomenon can be probed experimentally at HERA, with A being a proton and B being a bremsstrahlung photon with virtuality $Q^2$. Lossless events should be present for small $Q^2$, but not for $Q^2$ larger than $1/R_{\rm P}^2$, where $R_{\rm P}$ is a characteristic size of the pomeron.