Rapidity gap survival in the black-disk regime

TL;DR

This paper examines how the black-disk regime at TeV energies affects the likelihood of maintaining rapidity gaps in exclusive hard diffraction processes in proton-proton collisions, highlighting significant suppression effects.

Contribution

It introduces a partonic description of rapidity gap survival in the black-disk regime and analyzes suppression mechanisms due to soft and hard spectator interactions.

Findings

Hard spectator interactions greatly reduce gap survival probability at LHC energies.

Suppression of diffraction is caused by soft spectator interactions in the BDR.

Further suppression arises from inelastic interactions of hard spectator partons.

Abstract

We summarize how the approach to the black-disk regime (BDR) of strong interactions at TeV energies influences rapidity gap survival in exclusive hard diffraction pp -> p + H + p (H = dijet, Qbar-Q, Higgs). Employing a recently developed partonic description of such processes, we discuss (a) the suppression of diffraction at small impact parameters by soft spectator interactions in the BDR; (b) further suppression by inelastic interactions of hard spectator partons in the BDR; (c) correlations between hard and soft interactions. Hard spectator interactions substantially reduce the rapidity gap survival probability at LHC energies compared to previously reported estimates.