Splitting the pomeron into two jets: a novel process at HERA

N. N. Nikolaev; B. G. Zakharov

Paper

Splitting the pomeron into two jets: a novel process at HERA

Abstract

We study a novel property of large rapidity-gap events in deep inelastic scattering at HERA: splitting the pomeron into two jets in the photon-pomeron fusion reaction

. It gives rise to the diffraction dissociation of virtual photons into the back-to-back jets. We find that at large invariant mass

of two jets,

, the transverse momentum of jets comes from the intrinsic transverse momentum of gluons in the pomeron, and the photon-pomeron fusion direcly probes the diffrential gluon structure function of the proton

at the virtuality

. We present estimates for the jet production cross section, which show the process is easily measurable at HERA.