Soft Colour Interactions and Diffractive Hard Scattering at the Tevatron

We make a brief presentation of the soft colour interactions models, the Soft Colour Interaction and the Generalised Area Law, and summarise the results when they are applied to p-pbar scattering. The models give a good description of the Tevatron data on production of W, bottom and jets in diffractive events, as well as jets with two rapidity gaps, alternatively leading particles. We also give predictions for diffractive J/psi production and discuss diffractive Higgs production at the Tevatron and LHC.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, uses JHEP style. Talk presented at the International Europhysics Conference on High Energy Physics (EPS HEP 2001), Budapest, 12-18 July 200

Testing the dynamics of high energy scattering using vector meson production

I review work on diffractive vector meson production in photon-proton collisions at high energy and large momentum transfer, accompanied by proton dissociation and a large rapidity gap. This process provides a test of the high energy scattering dynamics, but is also sensitive to the details of the treatment of the vector meson vertex. The emphasis is on the description of the process by a solution of the non-forward BFKL equation, i.e. the equation describing the evolution of scattering amplitudes in the high-energy limit of QCD. The formation of the vector meson and the non-perturbative modeling needed is also briefly discussed.Comment: 17 pages, 8 figures. Brief review to appear in Mod. Phys. Lett.

Associated central exclusive production of charged Higgs bosons

We propose central exclusive production of a charged Higgs boson in association with a W boson as a possible signature of certain types of extended Higgs sectors. We calculate the cross section and find that the rate at the LHC could be large enough to allow observation in some models with two Higgs doublets, where the charged Higgs and at least one of the neutral scalars can be light enough. We use the two-Higgs doublet model as a prototype and consider two distinct regions of parameter space, but we also briefly discuss the prospects for the next-to-minimal supersymmetric standard model, where the charged Higgs may very well be quite light.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures. Minor changes, references added. Version to appear in PR

Vector Meson Photoproduction from the BFKL Equation II: Phenomenology

Diffractive vector meson photoproduction accompanied by proton dissociation is studied for large momentum transfer. The process is described by the non-forward BFKL equation which we use to compare to data collected at the HERA collider.Comment: 39 pages, 29 figure

Soft Colour Interactions in Non-perturbative QCD

Improved understanding of non-perturbative QCD dynamics can be obtained in terms of soft colour exchange models. Their essence is the variation of colour string-field topologies giving a unified description of final states in high energy interactions. In particular, both events with and without large rapidity gaps are obtained in agreement with data from ep at HERA and ppbar at the Tevatron, where also the surprisingly large production rate of high-p_T charmonium and bottomonium is reproduced.Comment: 4 pages, contribution to PANIC 99 conference proceedings, to appear in Nucl. Phys. A. Uses espcrc1.st

Rapidity Gaps from Colour String Topologies

Diffractive deep inelastic scattering at HERA and diffractive W and jet production at the Tevatron are well described by soft colour exchange models. Their essence is the variation of colour string-field topologies giving both gap and no-gap events, with a smooth transition and thereby a unified description of all final states.Comment: 3 pages, 6 eps figures, contribution to the DIS 99 workshop proceedings, uses npb.st

Hard colour singlet exchange and gaps between jets at the Tevatron

The new kind of events with a rapidity gap between two high-E_T jets, observed in high energy ppbar collisions at the Tevatron, is found to be well described by the exchange of a colour singlet gluon system in the BFKL framework. This requires going beyond the conventional asymptotic Mueller-Tang approximation, which results in qualitatively different features of the basic parton-parton scattering amplitude. Non-leading corrections to the BFKL equation are included by incorporation of the consistency constraint and the running QCD coupling. Hadronisation and other non-perturbative QCD effects are treated through a complete Monte Carlo simulation, providing a gap survival probability that varies event-by-event, facilitating comparison with experimental results.Comment: 15 pages, 11 eps figure