An introduction to Pomerons

Abstract

This talk is an attempt to clarify for experimentalists what we (theorists) mean when we are saying "Pomeron". I hope, that in this talk they will find answers to such questions as what is Pomeron, what we have learned about Pomeron, both experimentally and theoretically, what is correct strategy to study Pomeron experimentally and etc. I also hope that this talk could be used as a guide in the zoo of Pomerons: "soft" Pomeron, "hard" Pomeron, the BFKL Pomeron, the Donnachie-Landshoff Pomeron and so on. The large number of different Pomerons just reflects our poor understanding of high energy asymptotics in out microscopic theory -QCD. The motto of my talk, which gives you my opinion on the subject in short is:``Pomeron is still unknown but needed for 25 year to describe experimental data".