SOFT COLOR INTERACTIONS AS THE ORIGIN OF RAPIDITY GAPS IN DIS

We introduce soft colour interactions as a novel mechanism to understa nd the observed events with large rapidity gaps in ep collisions at HE RA. Colour exchanges between produced partons and colour-charges in th e proton remnant modifies the colour structure for hadronization, such that colour singlet systems may appear well separated in rapidity. Ou r explicit model show characteristics of diffractive scattering, altho ugh no explicit pomeron dynamics have been introduced, and for non-gap events an increased forward energy flow gives agreement with data.