Experimental Studies of Diffractive Processes at HERA

Abstract

Diffractive processes in photon-proton interactions at HERA offer the opportunity to improve the understanding of the transition between the soft, non-perturbative regime in hadronic interactions at $Q^2 = 0$ and the perturbative region at high $Q^2$. Recent experimental results from HERA on inclusive diffractive scattering, exclusive vector meson production and the properties of the hadronic final state in diffraction are reviewed. The results are discussed in the context of current theoretical models.Comment: 7 pages, 7 figure (6 in eps, 1 in ps) talk given at XXXI International Symposium on Multiparticle Dynamics, Sep. 1-7, 2001, Datong China URL http://ismd31.ccnu.edu.cn