Flavor and baryon quantum numbers and their nondiffractive renormalizations of the Pomeron

Abstract

We present a theoretical review and a detailed phenomenological description of the "flavoring" of the bare Pomeron pole at $t=0\mathrm{}$ (i.e., the nondiffractive renormalization of its multiperipheral unitarity sum by strange quarks, charmed quarks, diquarks,...) from an "unflavored" intercept $\hat{\alpha }=0.85\mathrm{}$ to a "flavored" intercept $\alpha \approx 1.08$. Experimentally, flavoring effects seem to converge rapidly; hence this number is probably close to the bare intercept of the Reggeon field theory. We treat $\mathrm{NN}$, $\pi N$, and $\mathrm{KN}$ total cross sections and real-to-imaginary amplitude ratios. We do not observe oscillations. We pay particular attention to $2{\sigma }_{\mathrm{KN}}-{\sigma }_{\pi N}$ which rises monotonically. We present a closely related combination of inelastic diffraction cross sections which decreases monotonically, indicating that vacuum amplitudes are not simply the sum of a Pomeron pole and an ideally mixed $f$. In fact we argue that a Pomeron+$f$ structure is neither compatible with flavoring nor with schemes in which flavoring is somehow absorbed away. In contrast, flavoring is required for consistency with experiment by the Chew-Rosenzweig hypothesis of the Pomeron-$f$ identity. We close with a description of flavoring-threshold effects on the Reggeon field theory at current energies.