Unified description of diffractive deep inelastic scattering with saturation

Abstract

We propose a new description of inclusive diffraction in deep inelastic scattering. The diffractive structure functions are expressed in the dipole picture and contain heavy-quark contributions. The dipole scattering amplitude, a saturation model fitted on inclusive deep inelastic scattering data, features a saturation scale ${Q}_{s}(x)$ larger than 1 GeV for $x={10}^{\ensuremath{-}5}$. The $q\overline{q}g$ contribution to the diffractive final state is modeled in such a way that both the large-${Q}^{2}$ and small-$\ensuremath{\beta}$ limits are implemented. In the regime ${x}_{\mathbb{P}}l0.01$ in which saturation is expected to be relevant, we obtain a parameter-free description of the HERA data with ${\ensuremath{\chi}}^{2}/\mathrm{points}=1.2$.