The non-forward BFKL amplitude and rapidity gap physics

We discuss the BFKL approach to processes with large momentum transferred through a rapidity gap. The Mueller and Tang scheme to the BFKL nonforward parton-parton elastic scattering amplitude at large t, is extended to include higher conformal spins. The new contributions are found to decrease with increasing energy, as follows from the gluon reggeization phenomenon, and to vanish for asymptotically high energies. However, at moderate energies and high \t\, the higher conformal spins dominate the amplitude. We illustrate the effects by studying the production of two high-E-T jets separated by a rapidity gap at HERA energies. In a simplified framework, we find excellent agreement with the HERA photoproduction data once we incorporate the rapidity gap survival probability against soft rescattering effects. We emphasize that measurements of the analogous process in electroproduction may probe different summations over conformal spins. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.