Combined inclusive diffractive cross sections measured with forward proton spectrometers in deep inelastic ep scattering at HERA

Understand

A combination of the inclusive diffractive cross section measurements made by the H1 and ZEUS Collaborations at HERA is presented.

• The analysis uses samples of diffractive deep inelastic ep scattering data at a centre-of-mass energy sqrt(s) = 318 GeV where leading protons are detected by dedicated spectrometers.
• Correlations of systematic uncertainties are taken into account, resulting in an improved precision of the cross section measurement which reaches 6% for the most precise points.
• The combined data cover the range 2.5 < Q2 < 200 GeV2 in photon virtuality, 0.00035 < xIP < 0.09 in proton fractional momentum loss, 0.09 < |t| < 0.55 GeV2 in squared four-momentum transfer at the proton vertex and 0.0018 < beta < 0.816 in beta = x/xIP, where x is the Bjorken scaling variable.