DIFFRACTIVE ELECTROPRODUCTION OF RHO-MESON EXCITATIONS

We use perturbative QCD and parton-hadron duality to estimate the cros s sections for the diffractive electroproduction of rho'(1(-)) and rho (3(-)) resonances which occur in the 1.3-1.8 GeV mass interval. We pre sent the cross sections and the ratios sigma(L)/sigma(T) as a function of Q(2). We compare the predictions with those for the diffractive el ectroproduction of rho mesons. We show how such diffractive electropro duction measurements at DESY HERA can probe features of the perturbati ve QCD ''Pomeron.''