Cross Section Measurements of Hard Diffraction at the SPS-Collider

TL;DR

This paper reports precise measurements of hard diffractive jet production at the SPS-Collider, providing insights into the partonic structure of the Pomeron and quantifying its momentum distribution violations.

Contribution

It presents the final cross section results for hard diffractive jets and introduces a method to quantify the Pomeron's partonic structure and flux normalization.

Findings

The fraction of single diffractive events with two high-ET jets is 0.002 to 0.003.

Determined the product of Pomeron flux and momentum sum rule violation, fK, for gluonic and qqbar Pomerons.

Quantified the degree of momentum sum rule violation in the Pomeron model.

Abstract

The UA8 experiment previously reported the observation of jets in diffractive events containing leading protons (``hard diffraction''), which was interpreted as evidence for the partonic structure of an exchanged Reggeon, believed to be the Pomeron . In the present Letter, we report the final UA8 hard-diffractive (jet) cross section results and their interpretation. After corrections, the fraction of single diffractive events with mass from 118 to 189 GeV that have two scattered partons, each with Et_jet > 8 GeV, is in the range 0.002 to 0.003 (depending on x_p). We determine the product, fK, of the fraction by which the Pomeron's momentum sum rule is violated and the normalization constant of the Pomeron-Flux-Factor of the proton. For a pure gluonic- or a pure qqbar-Pomeron , respectively: fK = 0.30 +- 0.05 +- 0.09) and (0.56 +- 0.09 +- 0.17) GeV^-2.