Pomeron Physics and QCD

Describes the underlying ideas and modern developments of Regge theory, covering phenomenology, theory and experiment.

This book describes the underlying ideas and modern developments of Regge theory, confronting the theory with quantum chromodynamics and a huge variety of experimental data. It covers forty years of research and provides a unique insight into the theory and its phenomenological development. The authors review experiments that suggest the existence of a soft pomeron, and give a detailed discussion of attempts at describing this through nonperturbative quantum chromodynamics. They suggest that a second, hard pomeron is responsible for the dramatic rise in energy observed in deep inelastic lepton scattering. The two-pomeron hypothesis is applied to a variety of interactions and is compared and contrasted with perturbative quantum chromodynamics, as well as with the dipole approach. This book will provide a valuable reference for experimental particle physicists all over the world. It is also suitable for graduate courses in particle physics, high-energy scattering, QCD and the standard model.

1. Properties of the S-matrix; 2. Regge poles; 3. Introduction to soft hadronic processes; 4. Duality; 5. Photon-induced processes; 6. QCD: perturbative and nonperturbative; 7. Hard processes; 8. Soft diffraction and vacuum structure; 9. The dipole approach; 10. Questions for the future; Appendix A. Sommerfeld-Watson transform; Appendix B. The Group SU(3); Appendix C. Feynman rules of QCD; Appendix D. Pion-nucleon amplitudes; Appendix E. The density matrix of vector mesons.

This book describes the underlying ideas and modern developments of Regge theory, confronting the theory with a huge variety of experimental data. Covering forty years of research, it provides a unique insight into the theory and its phenomenological development. Essential reading for particle physicists.

Sandy Donnachie obtained his PhD from the University of Glasgow in 1961. He is currently Professor of Physics at the University of Manchester, a post he has held since 1969.
Gunter Dosch was awarded his PhD in 1963, from the University of Heidelberg. Since then he has held positions at the University of Heidelberg, CERN, the University of Karlsruhe and Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Peter Landshoff qualified for his PhD from the University of Cambridge in 1962. He is Professor of Mathematical Physics there and is Vice-Master of Christ's College.
Otto Nachtmann obtained his PhD in 1967, from the University of Vienna. Since 1975 he has been a professor at the Institute for Theoretical Physics at the University of Heidelberg.