This monograph gives a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of soft and hard diffraction processes in strong interaction physics. The first part covers the general formalism (the optical analogy, the eikonal picture, high-energy kinematics, S-matrix theory) and soft hadron--hadron scattering (including the Regge theory) in a complete and mature presentation. It can be used as a textbook in particle physics classes. The remainder of the book is devoted to the "new diffraction": the pomeron in QCD, low-x physics, diffractive deep inelastic scattering and related processes, jet production etc. It presents recent results and experimental findings and their phenomenological interpretations. This part addresses graduate students as well as researchers.

Inhalt

1. Introduction.- 2. Preliminaries.- 3. Kinematics.- 4. The Relativistic S-Matrix.- 5. Regge Theory.- 6. Geometrical and s-Channel Models.- 7. Soft Diffraction: a Phenomenological Survey.- 8. The Pomeron in QCD.- 9. Deep Inelastic Scattering.- 10. Phenomenology of Hard Diffraction.- 11. Hard Diffraction in QCD.- A. Conventions.- A.1 Four-Vectors.- A.2 Sudakov Parametrization.- A.3 Reference Frames.- A.4 Fermionic States.- B. Mellin Transforms.- C. QCD Formulas.- C.2 Feynman Rules for QCD.- References.