Diffractive di-jet production at the LHC with a Reggeon contribution

TL;DR

This paper investigates the role of Reggeon exchanges in hard diffractive di-jet production at the LHC, showing they can be significant and highlighting the need for experimental constraints to improve theoretical models.

Contribution

It introduces a simple model for Reggeon parton content and demonstrates their potential dominance in certain LHC diffractive processes, emphasizing the importance of experimental measurements.

Findings

Reggeon contributions can be sizable or dominant in LHC diffractive di-jet production.

Certain kinematic regions are identified where Reggeon effects are most significant.

Proper experimental constraints are necessary to accurately model Reggeon exchanges.

Abstract

We study hard diffractive scattering in hadron-hadron collisions including, on top of the standard Pomeron-initiated processes, contributions due to the exchange of Reggeons. Using a simple model to describe the parton content of the Reggeon, we compute di-jet production in single diffractive and central diffractive events. We show that Reggeon contributions can be sizable at the LHC, and even sometimes dominant, and we identify kinematic windows in which they could be experimentally studied. We argue that suitable measurements must be performed in order to properly constrain the model, and be able to correctly account for Reggeon exchanges in the analysis of the many hard diffractive observables to be measured at the LHC.