Diffractive dijet production: breakdown of factorization

TL;DR

This paper investigates the breakdown of diffractive factorization in single-diffractive dijet production, revealing that spectator interactions both suppress and facilitate the process, with calculations aligning with Tevatron data.

Contribution

It introduces a parameter-free, amplitude-level calculation of spectator interactions in diffractive processes, explaining factorization failure in hadronic collisions.

Findings

Calculated SD-to-inclusive cross section ratio matches Tevatron data.

Spectator interactions suppress and enable SD dijet production.

Energy and scale dependence oppose traditional factorization expectations.

Abstract

We analyse the origin of dramatic breakdown of diffractive factorisation, observed in single-diffractive (SD) dijet production in hadronic collisions. One of the sources is the application of the results of measurements of the diagonal diffractive DIS to the off-diagonal hadronic diffractive process. The suppression caused by a possibility of inelastic interaction with the spectator partons is calculated at the amplitude level, differently from the usual probabilistic description. It turns out, however, that interaction with the spectator partons not only suppresses the SD cross section, but also gives rise to the main mechanism of SD dijet production, which is another important source of factorization failure. Our parameter-free calculations of SD-to-inclusive cross section ratio, performed in the dipole representation, agrees with the corresponding CDF Tevatron (Run II) data at $\sqrt{s}=1.96$ TeV in the relevant kinematic regions. The energy and hard scale dependences demonstrate a trend, opposite to the factorisation-based expectations, similarly to the effect observed earlier in diffractive Abelian radiation.