A model for soft high-energy scattering is developed. The model is formulated in terms of effective propagators and vertices for the exchange objects: the pomeron, the odderon, and the reggeons. The vertices are required to respect standard rules of QFT. The propagators are constructed taking into account the crossing properties of amplitudes in QFT and the power-law ansätze from the Regge model. We propose to describe the pomeron as an effective spin 2 exchange. This tensor pomeron gives, at high energies, the same results for the pp and pp elastic amplitudes as the standard Donnachie-Landshoff pomeron. But with our tensor pomeron it is much more natural to write down effective vertices of all kinds which respect the rules of QFT. This is particularly clear for the coupling of the pomeron to particles carrying spin, for instance vector mesons. We describe the odderon as an effective vector exchange. We emphasise that with a tensor pomeron and a vector odderon the corresponding charge-conjugation relations are automatically fulfilled. We compare the model to some experimental data, in particular to data for the total cross sections, in order to determine the model parameters. The model should provide a starting point for a general framework for describing soft highenergy reactions. It should give to experimentalists an easily manageable tool for calculating amplitudes for such reactions and for obtaining predictions which can be compared in detail with data.

The high energy limit of QCD is investigated in the generalized leading logarithmic approximation. We study unitarity corrections to the BFKL Pomeron containing t-channel states with up to six gluons. Special attention is given to the field theory structure of the corresponding multi-gluon amplitudes. We discuss the transition from two to six gluons in the t-channel.

This is the second of two papers in which we study real and virtual photon-proton scattering in a nonperturbative framework. In the first paper we have identified the leading contributions to this process at high energies and have derived expressions for them which take into account the renormalisation of the photonquark-antiquark vertex. In the present paper we investigate the approximations and assumptions that are necessary to obtain the dipole model of high energy scattering from the results derived in the first paper. We discuss the gauge invariance of different contributions to the scattering amplitude and point out some subtleties related to gauge invariance in the correct definition of a perturbative photon wave function. As a phenomenological consequence of the dipole picture we derive a bound on the ratio of the cross sections for longitudinally and transversely polarised photons. This bound is independent of any particular model for the dipole-proton cross section and allows one to test the validity of the assumptions leading to the dipole picture in particular at low photon virtualities. We conclude that the naive dipole model formula should be supplemented by two additional terms which can potentially become large at small photon virtualities.

We consider the reaction γp → π + π − p at high energies. Our description includes dipion production via the resonances ρ, ω, ρ and f 2 , and via non-resonant mechanisms. The calculation is based on a model of high energy scattering with the exchanges of photon, pomeron, odderon and reggeons. The pomeron and the C = +1 reggeons are described as effective tensor exchanges, the odderon and the C = −1 reggeons as effective vector exchanges. We obtain a gauge-invariant version of the Drell-Söding mechanism which produces the skewing of the ρ-meson shape. Starting from the explicit formulae for the matrix element for dipion production we construct an event generator which comprises all contributions mentioned above and includes all interference terms. We give examples of total and differential cross sections and discuss asymmetries which are due to interference of C = +1 and C = −1 exchange contributions. These asymmetries can be used to search for odderon effects. Our model is intended to provide all necessary theoretical tools for a detailed experimental analysis of elastic dipion production for which data exist from fixed target experiments, from HERA, and are now being collected by LHC experiments.