Towards a Combined HERA Diffractive Deep Inelastic Scattering Measurement

TL;DR

This paper compares and combines diffractive deep inelastic scattering measurements from H1 and ZEUS at HERA, using various techniques to improve the consistency and accuracy of the results.

Contribution

It presents a detailed comparison of different measurement methods and initiates the combination of results from two major experiments in diffractive scattering.

Findings

Measurements are consistent within uncertainties.

Different techniques yield compatible diffractive cross sections.

First combined results are being developed.

Abstract

The diffractive dissociation of virtual photons, gamma*p -> Xp, has been studied with the H1 and ZEUS detectors at HERA using various complementary techniques. Events have been selected by direct tagging of the outgoing proton or by requiring a large rapidity gap between the proton and the system X. The diffractive contribution has also been unfolded by decomposition of the inclusive hadronic final state invariant mass distribution. Here, detailed comparisons are made between diffractive cross section measurements obtained from the different methods and the two experiments, showing them to be consistent within the large uncertainties associated with the treatment of proton dissociation processes. First steps are taken towards the combination of the H1 and ZEUS results.