Renormalized diffractive cross sections at HERA and the structure of the pomeron

Abstract

A phenomenological renormalization scheme for hadronic diffraction is proposed, which achieves unitarization without the need for "screening corrections". Predictions for diffractive photoproduction cross sections at HERA are presented and compared with experimental results. A new interpretation of hard and deep inelastic diffractive data emerges, in which the momentum sum rule is obeyed by the constituents of a pomeron described as a mixture of quark and gluon color singlets in a ratio dictated by asymptopia.