The Relation between the Good-Walker and Triple-Regge Formalisms for Diffractive Excitation

TL;DR

This paper explores the connection between the Good-Walker and triple-Regge formalisms for diffractive excitation, demonstrating they are different perspectives of the same underlying phenomenon in high-energy physics.

Contribution

It establishes a theoretical link between two prominent formalisms for diffractive processes, supported by a toy model and perturbative QCD analysis.

Findings

The two formalisms are equivalent descriptions of diffractive excitation.

A simple toy model illustrates the relation between the formalisms.

Perturbative QCD features support the connection.

Abstract

In this note we analyse the relation between the triple-pomeron and Good-Walker formalisms for diffractive excitation in DIS and hadronic collisions. In both approaches gap events are interpreted as the shadow of absorption into inelastic channels. We here argue that the two formalisms are just different views of the same phenomenon. We first demonstrate how this relation works in a simple toy model, and then show how the relevant features of the toy model are also realized in real perturbative QCD.