Dual parton model

Abstract

Soft multiparticle production is a dominant feature of most events in high energy hadronic collisions. Since soft processes have no large momentum transfer, perturbative QCD expansions in the strong coupling constant are not applicable. However, suitable large N expansions of QCD provide a topological classification of diagrams and a potentially useful non-perturbative approach. This topological expansion, when supplemented with generally accepted theoretical principles like duality, unitarity, Regge behavior and the parton structure of hadrons, provides the basis underlying the dual parton model (DPM). This model has been extensively studied and gradually extended over the past twelve years. It has been shown that DPM provides a complete, phenomenological description of all facets of soft processes. This is a non-trivial achievement in view of the large amount of soft multiparticle data available from both hadronic as well as nuclear beams and targets. Here, we describe the basic ideas of the model and review the main results coming from DPM.