Self-Organized Criticality in Gluon Systems and its Consequences

It is pointed out, that color-singlet gluon clusters can be formed in hadrons as a consequence of self-organized criticality (SOC) in systems of interacting soft gluons, and that the properties of such spatiotemporal complexities can be probed experimentally by examing inelastic diffractive scattering. Theoretical arguments and experimental evidence supporting the proposed picture are presented. As a consequence of the space-time properties of the color-singlet gluon clusters due to SOC in gluon systems, a simple analytical formula for the differential cross section for inelastic diffractive hadron-hadron scattering can be derived. The obtained results are in good agreement with the existing data. Furthermore, it is shown that meson radii can be extracted from inelastic diffractive scattering experiments. The obtained results for pion and kaon charge radii are compared with those determined in meson form factor measurements.

K. Tabelow · 2001