Azimuthal angles in diffractive ep collisions

Abstract

We investigate azimuthal correlations in deep inelastic diffractive scattering, e + p -> e + \tilde{p} + X. The dependence of the ep cross section on the angle between the lepton plane and some direction in the hadronic final state can be written in a simple form; its measurement can be used to constrain the cross section for longitudinally polarised photons. Using the model of nonperturbative two-gluon exchange of Landshoff and Nachtmann we calculate the distribution of the azimuthal jet angle in diffractive dijet production and find that useful bounds on the longitudinal cross section for such events might be obtained from its measurement. We then discuss the predictions of this model for the dependence of the ep cross section on the azimuthal angle of the proton remnant \tilde{p}, which contains information about the helicity content of the pomeron.