Inelastic diffraction data and the effective [formula omitted]omeron trajectory

Abstract

A further analysis of inelastic diffraction data at the ISR and SPS-Collider confirms the relatively flat s-independent P omeron trajectory in the high-| t| domain, 1<| t|<2 GeV 2, reported earlier by the UA8 Collaboration. At | t|=1.5 GeV 2, α=0.92±0.03 is in agreement with the trajectories found in diffractive photoproduction of vector mesons at HERA. This suggests a universal fixed P omeron trajectory at high-| t|. We also show that a triple-Regge P omeron-exchange parametrization fit to the data requires an s-dependent (effective) P omeron trajectory intercept, α(0), which decreases with increasing s, as expected from unitarization (multi- P omeron-exchange) calculations. α(0) = 1.10 at the lowest ISR energy, 1.03 at the SPS-Collider and perhaps smaller at the Tevatron.