INTRODUCTION TO THE POMERON STRUCTURE FUNCTION

Abstract

In many ways the pomeron is like the photon, but there are important differences. Factorisation allows us to define a pomeron structure function, even though the pomeron is not a particle. Although we have a model for the light-quark content of the pomeron, which led to the prediction that a surprisingly large fraction of events at HERA would have an extremely-fast final-state proton, its charm and gluon content will have to be got from experiment. Because the pomeron is not a particle, we cannot derive a momentum sum rule.