Effective Field Theory for Diffraction

by Iain Stewart (MIT)

Monday 16 Dec 2024, 16:00 → 17:00 Europe/Berlin

ENC-D308

A significant fraction of scattering events at colliders are diffractive, with large angular gaps devoid of particles, but a first principle theoretical description of these events based on QCD has been lacking.  Such diffractive processes are believed to be important for unlocking the small-x regime where protons and ions become saturated with gluons, and hence are a key target for both the LHC and a future Electron-Ion Collider.  In this talk I setup an effective field theory description of diffraction, and derive the first factorization formula for the forward (Regge) physics in e-p diffractive scattering.  This provides a way of assessing earlier models used in diffractive fits, provides power counting tools that predict larger than expected asymmetry structure functions, and provides rigorous tools for comparing the size of singlet (Pomeron) exchange contributions, to irreducible backgrounds caused by color non-singlet exchanges.