Inelastic Diffraction and Color-Singlet Gluon Clusters in High-Energy Hadron-Hadron and Lepton-Hadron Collisions

Abstract

It is proposed that the “colorless” objects which manifest themselves in large-rapidity-gap events are color-singlet gluon clusters due to self-organized criticality (SOC), and that optical-geometrical concepts and methods are useful in examining the space-time properties of such objects. A simple analytical expression for the $t$ dependence of the inelastic single diffractive cross section $d\sigma /dt$ ( $t$ is the four-momentum transfer squared) is derived. Comparison with existing data and predictions for future experiments are presented. The main differences and similarities between the SOC approach and the “partons in the Pomeron (Pomeron and Reggeon)” approach are discussed.