Pomeron flux renormalization in soft and hard diffraction

While the main features of elastic, diffractive and total cross sections are described well by Regge theory, the measured rise of the proton-(anti)proton single diffraction dissociation cross section with energy is considerably smaller than the theoretical prediction based on factorization and a constant triplepomeron coupling. The observed energy dependence is obtained by renormalizing the pomeron flux “carried” by a nucleon to unity. Double diffraction and double pomeron exchange cross sections are reevaluated and compared to data, and a new interpretation of hard diffraction results emerges in which the hard pomeron obeys the momentum sum rule.