Deep-inelastic Diffraction and the Pomeron as a Single Gluon

Deep-inelastic diffractive scaling provides fundamental insight into the QCD pomeron. It is argued that single gluon domination of the structure function, together with the well-known Regge pole property, determines that the pomeron carries color-charge parity Cc = −1 and, at short distances, is in a super-critical phase of Reggeon Field Theory. The main purpose of the talk is to describe the relationship of the super-critical pomeron to QCD. Presented at the International Conference (VIIth Blois Workshop) On Elastic and Diffractive Scattering Recent Advances in Hadron Physics. Seoul, Korea. June 10-14, 1997. Work supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Division of High Energy Physics, Contracts W-31-109-ENG-38 and DEFG05-86-ER-40272 [email protected]