# Diffractive parton distributions in light-cone QCD *footnote **footnote *Talk by F. Hautmann at the International Symposium on Multiparticle Dynamics and QCD ISMD99, Brown University, 9-13 August 1999, to appear in the proceedings.

## I Introduction

The understanding of hadronic diffraction within QCD is one of the frontiers of the theory of the strong interactions. A great deal of progress has been achieved recently in this area, following the realization that, for diffractive hard processes with only one hadron in the initial state, a property of factorization of short and long distances holds, similar to the analogous property in inclusive hard scattering . This property allows one to give a parton interpretation of diffractive deeply inelastic scattering. This talk is based on work  in which the methods of light-cone QCD are used to investigate diffractive parton distributions. Sec. 2 is devoted to discussing the basic elements of this approach. Secs. 3 and 4 describe applications to, respectively, the case of a gedanken diffraction experiment and the case of HERA collider experiments.

## II Factorization and “aligned jet” picture

Consider diffractive deeply inelastic scattering of a hadron $`A`$,

$$e+Ae^{}+A^{}+X,$$
(1)   
in which $`A`$ is scattered with a fractional loss of longitudinal momentum $`x_{IP}`$ and invariant momentum transfer $`t`$. Let $`Q^2`$ and $`x`$ be as usual the photon virtuality and the Bjorken variable of the deeply inelastic collision. The factorizability of the hard scattering  implies that the diffractive deeply inelastic cross section can be written in terms of diffractive parton distributions, that is, functions that represent the probability to find a parton of type $`a`$ in hadron $`A`$ on the condition that $`A`$ is diffractively scattered .

These distributions can be defined as matrix elements of certain “measurement” operators, given through the fundamental quark and gluon fields. If $`p_A`$ is the hadron’s momentum, taken to be in the plus light-cone direction, and $`\beta x_{IP}`$ is the fraction of this momentum carried by the parton, the form of the gluon distribution is

$`{\displaystyle \frac{df_{g/A}^{\mathrm{diff}}(\beta x_{IP},x_{IP},t,\mu )}{dx_{IP}dt}}={\displaystyle \frac{1}{(4\pi )^3\beta x_{IP}p_A^+}}{\displaystyle \underset{X}{}}{\displaystyle 𝑑y^{}e^{i\beta x_{IP}p_A^+y^{}}}`$ (2)   
$`\times A|\stackrel{~}{G}_a(0)^{+j}|A^{},XA^{},X|\stackrel{~}{G}_a(0,y^{},\mathrm{𝟎})^{+j}|A,`$ (3)   
where $`\stackrel{~}{G}_a^{+j}`$ is the field strength modified by multiplication by the path-ordered exponential of a line integral of the color potential:

$$\stackrel{~}{G}_a(y)^{+j}=E(y)_{ab}G_b(y)^{+j},E(y)=𝒫\mathrm{exp}\left(ig_y^{}^{\mathrm{}}𝑑x^{}A_c^+(y^+,x^{},𝐲)t_c\right).$$
(4)   
The scale $`\mu `$ in Eq. (2) is the scale at which the ultraviolet divergences from the operator products are renormalized. A formula analogous to (2) holds for the quark distribution.

Eq. (2) may be understood starting from the theory canonically quantized on planes $`x^+=\text{const.}`$ in $`A^+=0`$ gauge. In this gauge the operator in Eq. (2) can be related to the number operator. In general, though, the definition in Eq. (2) is gauge-invariant: it is made gauge-invariant by the path-ordered exponential (4). This factor has a physical interpretation in terms of the recoil color flow , represented as a fast moving color charge that goes out along a lightlike line in the minus direction, coupling to gluons from the hadron’s field.

The usefulness of the definition (2) (and its counterpart for quarks) comes from the fact that the experimentally observed diffractive structure functions, $`dF_k^{\mathrm{diff}}/[dx_{IP}dt]`$, are related to $`df_{a/A}^{\mathrm{diff}}/[dx_{IP}dt]`$ through short-distance coefficients $`\widehat{F}`$ which are known from perturbative calculations for deeply inelastic scattering :

$$\frac{dF_k^{\mathrm{diff}}}{dx_{IP}dt}\widehat{F}_{ka}\frac{df_{a/A}^{\mathrm{diff}}}{dx_{IP}dt}.$$
(5)   
That is, the definition (2) projects out precisely the long-distance factor that distinguishes diffractive deeply inelastic scattering from ordinary (inclusive) deeply inelastic scattering.

To gain insight into the structure of this factor, it is useful to look at the diffraction process in a reference frame in which the struck hadron is at rest (or almost at rest). The aligned jet picture  of deeply inelastic scattering suggests that in such a frame the spacetime structure of the small $`x`$ process looks simple. The parton probed by the measurement operator is created at light cone times $`x^{}`$ far in the past, $`x^{}\mathrm{}`$, along with a color source of the opposite color. This system moves with large momentum in the minus direction, of order $`k^{}p_{}/x_{IP}`$, with $`p_{}`$ being the typical transverse momentum of the system. It evolves slowly in $`x^{}`$, possibly turning into a system with more partons. Much later, around $`x^{}0`$, it interacts with the color field produced by the diffracted hadron. After that, it continues its slow evolution.

In the simplest perturbative approximation to this picture, only one gluon is emitted into the final state, and the interaction with the color field of the hadron is simply given by the absorption of two gluons. This case is depicted in Fig. 1.

In general, aligned jet configurations may involve $`N`$ final state partons, with the hadron’s field being represented by an external color field. The problem is then that of calculating an amplitude of the type

$$^{js_1\mathrm{}s_N}=𝑑y^{}e^{i\beta x_{IP}p_A^+y^{}}k_1,s_1,\mathrm{},k_N,s_N|𝒪^j(0,y^{},\mathrm{𝟎})|0_𝒜,$$
(6)   
where $`𝒪^j`$ represents the measurement operator (defined by the gluon or quark distribution), $`k_i,s_i`$ are the momenta and spins of final state partons and the matrix element is evaluated in the presence of an external color field $`𝒜`$. As $`1/x_{IP}\mathrm{}`$, the diffractive parton distribution is obtained  by integrating over the final states the squared amplitude, taken in the limit in which the momenta $`k_i^{}`$ become large (scaling like $`1/x_{IP}`$), while the external field $`𝒜`$ stays fixed.

At high energy the amplitude $``$ may be evaluated using the approximation in which the action of the external field is simply to produce an eikonal phase $`F`$ for each parton while leaving its minus momentum and its transverse position unchanged:

$$F(𝐛)𝒫\mathrm{exp}\left\{ig_{\mathrm{}}^+\mathrm{}𝑑z^{}𝒜_a^+(0,z^{},𝐛)t_a\right\}.$$
(7)   
(For related approaches, see refs.  and .) Then the answer for $``$ decomposes into a part associated with $`F`$ and a part associated with the measurement operator . The result for $`N=1`$ has the form

$$^{js}=\frac{d^2𝐩}{(2\pi )^2}\left[\stackrel{~}{F}(𝐤𝐩)F(0)(2\pi )^2\delta ^2(𝐤𝐩)\right]\psi ^{js}(𝐤,𝐩),$$
(8)   
where $`\stackrel{~}{F}`$ is the Fourier transform of $`F`$,

$$\stackrel{~}{F}(𝐪)=d^2𝐛e^{i𝐪𝐛}F(𝐛),$$
(9)   
and $`\psi `$ is the light-cone wave function

$$\psi ^{js}(𝐤,𝐩)=i\frac{k^{},𝐩;s|𝒪^j(0)|0}{\beta x_{IP}p_A^++𝐩^2/(2k^{})}.$$
(10)   
This wave function can be interpreted as representing the parton state just before it interacts with the external field. The explicit expressions for the gluon and quark wave functions may be found in refs. . It is worth remarking that these wave functions are associated with the operator in Eq. (2) (or its analogue for quarks) rather than with the electromagnetic current of the deeply inelastic scattering. In particular, they do not depend on $`Q^2`$. The dependence on $`Q^2`$ is factored out in the coefficients $`\widehat{F}`$ in Eq. (5). This allows one to systematically include perturbative corrections beyond the leading logarithms for both the quark and the gluon contributions.

A technical aspect of the light-cone formalism is also worth noting. The wave function $`\psi `$ describes a system with large minus momentum. The natural formulation for such a system is one in which the theory is quantized on planes of equal $`x^{}`$. This singles out the components of the quark field that give the independent degrees of freedom. It is an equation of constraint  that allows one to relate these to the components that have a simple partonic interpretation for a hadron moving in the plus direction.

## III The case of small-size states: perturbation expansion

In Eq. (8) the interaction of the parton system created by the measurement operator with the hadron’s color field is described by the factor in the square brackets. If one considers a thought experiment on a color source with sufficiently small radius, this interaction can be represented as a perturbation expansion. Then the full answer for the diffractive distribution can be computed at weak coupling. The result for the example of a small color dipole made of a pair of heavy quarks may be found in ref. . The form of the result at the lowest perturbative order is very simple. It depends on the size of the source, $`R1/M`$, through an overall quadratic factor $`1/M^2`$. It is also scale invariant, since all graphs are ultraviolet convergent.

To higher loops, ultraviolet divergences arise. The renormalization of these divergences brings in a renormalization scale $`\mu `$ and gives rise to scaling violation. The dependence of the diffractive parton distributions on $`\mu `$ can be included systematically through the usual DGLAP evolution equations.

The higher loop contributions are of order $`\alpha _s\mathrm{ln}(\mu ^2/M^2)`$ compared to the lowest order term. When $`\mathrm{ln}(\mu ^2/M^2)`$ is large, they are important, and thus evolution is important. When $`\mu M`$, they are small corrections to the lowest order term. Then the diffractive parton distributions at a scale $`\mu `$ are obtained by solving the evolution equations with the results of the lowest order calculation as a boundary condition at a scale of order $`M`$.

## IV The realistic case: semihard dominance and evolution

In the case of realistic experiments of diffraction on large size systems, the interaction with the hadron’s field depends on nonperturbative physics. The answer for the diffractive parton distributions cannot be determined from a purely perturbative expansion, but it depends on the infrared behavior of the diffraction process.

Suppose one started with the small size situation of the previous section and let the system’s size increase. A possible scenario could be that, as the system’s size becomes of order $`R1/(300\text{MeV})`$, the answer becomes completely dominated by the soft region $`k_{}300\text{MeV}`$. This is what a perturbative power counting for the diffractive scattering amplitude would suggest. This would suggest that the diffractive parton distributions in the case of diffraction on protons are radically different from those for a small system.

A different scenario is discussed in ref. . In this scenario, an intermediate scale exists at which nonperturbative dynamics sets in that reduces the infrared sensitivity suggested by the perturbative power counting. Then the distance scales that dominate the diffraction process, rather than continuing to grow as we go to larger and larger sizes, stay of the order of some semihard scale $`M_{\mathrm{SH}}^1`$ of the order of a GeV<sup>-1</sup>. Under this hypothesis, the diffractive parton distributions should be similar to what one gets from the distributions for a small system using evolution from the scale $`M=M_{\mathrm{SH}}`$ to the multi-GeV scale relevant for experiments.

Results for the $`\beta `$ and $`Q^2`$ behavior of diffractive deeply inelastic scattering are shown in Fig. 2 and compared with the ZEUS data of ref. . The curves in this figure are obtained for $`M_{\mathrm{SH}}=1.5\text{GeV}`$. Given the value of $`M`$, both the $`Q^2`$ dependence and also the $`\beta `$ dependence are determined from theory. Only the overall normalization is not. The agreement between theory and experiment in Fig. 2 is evidently not perfect; however, certain qualitative features of the data are reproduced. The curves of Fig. 2 show that in the mid range of $`\beta `$ the diffractive structure function $`F_2^{\mathrm{diff}}`$ is rather flat as a function of $`\beta `$ and, in the range of $`Q^2`$ shown, it increases with $`Q^2`$ for $`\beta `$ up to about 0.5. These results are dramatically at variance with what happens in the case of the inclusive $`F_2`$. The difference in the pattern of scaling violation between the diffractive case and the inclusive case is illustrated in Fig. 3.

The reason for these behaviors lies with the form (8) of the diffractive parton distributions. The explicit evaluation  of this form shows that the nature of the coupling of the hadron’s field to fast moving gluons or quarks is such that the $`\beta `$ dependence is rather mild. Also, it shows that the hadron’s field has a much stronger coupling to gluons than it does to quarks, with the ratio being controlled in the first approximation by the ratio of color factors $`C_A^2(N_c^21)/(C_F^2N_c)=27/2`$ . Thus the depletion of quarks in the mid range of momentum fractions under evolution, due to gluon bremsstrahlung, is compensated by the replenishment of quarks from gluon splitting into $`q\overline{q}`$ pairs. The net result is that the diffractive quark distribution rises with $`Q^2`$ at intermediate $`\beta `$, and so does $`F_2^{\mathrm{diff}}`$.

The predictions of Fig. 2 are based on the choice $`M=1.5\text{GeV}`$. If one decreases this value below $`1\text{GeV}`$, one finds  that, compared to the data, there is too much of a slope in $`\beta `$ and too strong a dependence on $`Q^2`$. Thus a semihard scale seems to be preferred by the data. Note that a semihard scale in diffractive deeply inelastic scattering is also consistent with experimental observations of the $`x_{IP}`$ dependence. The value of $`\alpha _{IP}(0)1`$ measured in diffractive deeply inelastic scattering  differs by a factor of $`2`$ from the corresponding value measured in soft hadron-hadron cross sections .

The origin of the scale $`M_{\mathrm{SH}}`$ is essentially nonperturbative. This scale is generated in a region of low $`x`$ and low $`Q^2`$ where the gluon density is high and one may expect nonlinear effects to set in . It would be interesting to study whether such a scale arises in other contexts associated with the growth of the gluon density.

## Acknowledgments

We thank the organizers for their invitation to ISMD99. This research is supported in part by the US Department of Energy.