Experimental results on proton diffractive dissociation

Properties of proton diffractive dissociation have been investigated for four-prong final states in proton-proton reactions at 360 GeV/c, in particular forpp→ppπ+π−mπ0(m=0,1,2). Mass distributions and decay angular distributions are given. The decay of the diffractive system is seen to be very anisotropic, and largepT is suppressed at higher masses. It is found that the “pomeron” couples with a single valence quark of the incident proton, but indications for a diquark-pomeron coupling are also found. Similarities with fragmentation in lepton-hadron deep inelastic scattering are underlined.