Does F2 need a hard pomeron?

Abstract

We show that the latest HERA measurements of F2 are compatible with the existence of a triple pole at J=1. Such a structure also accounts for soft forward hadronic amplitudes, so that the introduction of a new singularity is not necessary to describe DIS data.

Comments: 11 pages, 4 figures, minor typos in the number of data points and in the definition of b fixed, references clarified