Jet Production via Strongly-Interacting Color-Singlet Exchange in $p\bar{p}$ Collisions

Abstract

A study of the particle multiplicity between jets with large rapidity separation has been performed using the DØdetector at the Fermilab Tevatron $p\bar{p}$ Collider operating at $\sqrt{s}=1.8$ TeV. A significant excess of low-multiplicity events is observed above the expectation for color-exchange processes. The measured fractional excess is $1.07\pm 0.10(\mathrm{stat}{)}_{-0.13}^{+0.25}(\mathrm{syst})$, which is consistent with a strongly-interacting color-singlet (colorless) exchange process and cannot be explained by electroweak exchange alone. A lower limit of 0.80% (95% C.L.) is obtained on the fraction of dijet events with color-singlet exchange, independent of the rapidity gap survival probability.

Comments: 15 pages (REVTeX), 3 PS figs (uuencoded/tar compressed, epsf.sty) Complete postscript available at http://d0sgi0.fnal.gov/d0pubs/journals.html Submitted to Physical Review Letters