Gaps between jets at hadron colliders in the next-to-leading BFKL framework

Abstract

We investigate diffractive events in hadron-hadron collisions, in which two jets are produced and separated by a large rapidity gap. In perturbative QCD, the hard color-singlet object exchanged in the $t$ channel, and responsible for the rapidity gap, is the Balitsky-Fadin-Kuraev-Lipatov Pomeron. We perform a phenomenological study including the corrections due to next-to-leading logarithms. Using a renormalization-group improved next-to-leading logarithmic kernel, we show that the Balitsky-Fadin-Kuraev-Lipatov predictions are in good agreement with the Tevatron data and present predictions which could be tested at the LHC.