Inclusive diffraction and factorisation at HERA

TL;DR

This paper presents recent measurements of diffraction in deep inelastic scattering at HERA, extracting diffractive parton densities to test QCD factorisation and its implications for predicting processes like diffractive Higgs production.

Contribution

It provides new experimental data and QCD fits for the diffractive parton densities, testing the validity of factorisation in diffraction.

Findings

Validation of QCD factorisation in diffraction

Extraction of diffractive parton density functions

Implications for predicting diffractive processes at the LHC

Abstract

In this article, recent measurements of diffraction in deep inelastic scattering are presented along with QCD fits to extract the partonic structure of the exchange. These so-called diffractive parton density functions can then be used in predictions for other processes to test factorisation in diffraction. This is an important verification of QCD and has significance for predicting exotic signals such as diffractive Higgs production at the LHC.