Combined inclusive diffractive cross sections measured with forward proton spectrometers in deep inelastic ep scattering at HERA

TL;DR

This paper combines and refines measurements of inclusive diffractive cross sections in deep inelastic ep scattering at HERA, achieving higher precision across a broad kinematic range by accounting for systematic uncertainties.

Contribution

It presents a combined analysis of H1 and ZEUS data, improving the precision of diffractive cross section measurements with systematic uncertainty correlations.

Findings

Achieved 6% measurement precision for the most accurate data points.

Extended the kinematic coverage for diffractive cross sections in ep scattering.

Provided a comprehensive dataset for future QCD and diffraction studies.

Abstract

A combination of the inclusive diffractive cross section measurements made by the H1 and ZEUS Collaborations at HERA is presented. The analysis uses samples of diffractive deep inelastic ep scattering data at a centre-of-mass energy sqrt(s) = 318 GeV where leading protons are detected by dedicated spectrometers. Correlations of systematic uncertainties are taken into account, resulting in an improved precision of the cross section measurement which reaches 6% for the most precise points. The combined data cover the range 2.5 < Q2 < 200 GeV2 in photon virtuality, 0.00035 < xIP < 0.09 in proton fractional momentum loss, 0.09 < |t| < 0.55 GeV2 in squared four-momentum transfer at the proton vertex and 0.0018 < beta < 0.816 in beta = x/xIP, where x is the Bjorken scaling variable.