Diffractive dissociation re-visited for predictions at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper revisits diffractive dissociation at high energies, providing a formalism that explicitly includes absorptive corrections and gap survival probability, leading to a larger triple-Pomeron vertex consistent with other data.

Contribution

It introduces a formalism for triple-Regge analysis that explicitly accounts for absorptive effects and gap survival, refining the estimate of the triple-Pomeron coupling.

Findings

The triple-Pomeron vertex is larger when absorptive corrections are explicitly included.

The bare triple-Pomeron coupling is consistent with gamma p -> J/psi + Y data.

The analysis suggests a zero slope for the vertex, indicating a small size.

Abstract

We describe the formalism, and present the results, for a triple-Regge analysis of the available pp and p\bar{p} high-energy data which explicitly accounts for absorptive corrections. In particular, we allow for the gap survival probability, S^2, in single proton diffractive dissociation. Since for pp scattering the value of S^2 is rather small, the triple-Pomeron vertex obtained in this analysis is larger than that obtained in the old analyses where the suppression caused by the absorptive corrections was implicitly included in an effective vertex. We show that the bare triple-Pomeron coupling that we extract from the pp and p\bar{p} data is consistent with that obtained in a description of the gamma p -> J/psi + Y HERA data. The analyses of the data prefer a zero slope, corresponding to the small size of the bare vertex, giving the hope of a smooth matching to the perturbative QCD treatment of the triple-Pomeron coupling.