Eur. Phys. J. C (2006) 46: 413-420
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s2006-02517-7

Theoretical Physics

Saturation in diffractive deep inelastic eA scattering

¹ Instituto de Física, Universidade de São Paulo, C.P. 66318, 05315-970, São Paulo, SP, Brazil
² High and Medium Energy Group (GAME), Instituto de Física e Matemática, Universidade Federal de Pelotas, C.P. 354, CEP 96010-900, Pelotas, RS, Brazil

^* e-mail: msks@if.usp.br

Received: 18 November 2005
Revised: 30 January 2006
Published online: 24 March 2006

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the saturation physics in diffractive deep inelastic electron-ion scattering. We estimate the energy and nuclear dependence of the ratio σ^diff/σ^tot and predict the x_ℙ and β behavior of the nuclear diffractive structure function F_2,A ^D(3)(Q²,β,x_ℙ). Moreover, we analyze the ratio R^diff _A1,A2(Q²,β,x_ℙ)=F_2,A1 ^D(3)/F_2,A2 ^D(3), which probes the nuclear dependence of the structure of the pomeron. We show that saturation physics predicts that approximately 37% of the events observed at eRHIC should be diffractive.