Diffraction in deep inelastic scattering: the hadronic nature of quarks

We analyse the "diffractive" events reported by the HERA groups within a theoretical framework (Anisotropic Chrome Dynamics, ACD) that attributes to the fundamental quanta of QCD (quarks and gluons) a completely hadronic behaviour except, of course, for the quark "point-like" coupling to the electroweak fields. The remarkable success of our calculation, free of adjustable parameters, highlights the importance, also in DIS, of long distance, colour confining interaction. With a careful analysis of H1 and ZEUS data, independent of our model, we find a single power law to the eta(p) dependence of the triple differential structure function F-2(D) (eta(p),beta,Q(2)), yielded the universal Value of the Pomeron intercept alpha(p) = 1.069+/-0.03. (C) 1997 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.