Perturbative Treatment of Diffractive Dissociation at High Energies

Abstract

Two-component models have been quite successful in fitting multiplicity distributions in high-energy hadronic collisions. The fact that the diffractive component is considerably smaller than the short-range-correlation component suggests the possibility of a perturbative expansion of the high-energy total cross section. We develop such an expansion in this paper, and examine some of its consequences. Prominent among these consequences are: (i) diffraction dissociation into high masses rises approximately logarithmically with energy at NAL-ISR (CERN Intersecting Storage Rings) energies, (ii) the short-range-correlation part of the cross section has high-energy behavior dominated by a "bare" Pomeron Regge pole, and (iii) the average multiplicity of particles produced in diffractive dissociation rises logarithmically with energy.