Charm as a Key to Diffractive Processes
arXiv:hep-ph/9703314 · doi:10.1016/S0370-2693(97)00560-1
Abstract
The diffractive production of open charm in deep-inelastic scattering is studied in the semiclassical approach which has been proposed recently. In this approach, the leading order process contains a charm quark pair and an additional gluon in the diffractive final state. The $p_{\perp}$-spectrum and the diffractive mass distribution are evaluated and compared with predictions based on perturbative two-gluon exchange calculations for charm quark pair production. It is shown that the $p_{\perp}$-spectrum provides a clear test of the underlying partonic process whereas the diffractive mass distribution reflects the non-perturbative mechanism of colour neutralization.
10 pages, latex, 4 figures. Minor modifications to text in response to referees report. Accepted for publication in Phys. Lett. B