THE POMERON STRUCTURE IN DIS AND GLUON RECOMBINATION EFFECTS

A formalism for diffractive deep inelastic scattering is presented bas ed on the concept of a pomeron structure function. Assuming the pomero n to be essentially a gluonic object with the small size indicated by its small interaction cross-sections, we show that the QCD evolution o f its structure function exhibits large screening corrections due to g luon recombinations at small-x. With a gluon-to-quark conversion appro priate at small-x, diffractive ep cross-sections are obtained giving l arge enough statistics at HERA to distinguish between QCD evolution go verned by the conventional Altarelli-Parisi equations and by the non-l inear Gribov-Levin-Ryskin equation.