Measurement of the t Distribution in Diffractive Photoproduction at HERA

Photon diffractive dissociation, γp → Xp, has been studied at HERA with the ZEUS detector using ep interactions where the virtuality Q2 of the exchanged photon is smaller than 0.02 GeV2. The squared four-momentum t exchanged at the proton vertex was determined in the range 0.073 < \t\ < 0.40 GeV2 by measuring the scattered proton in the ZEUS Leading Proton Spectrometer. In the photonproton centre-of-mass energy interval 176 < W < 225 GeV and for masses of the dissociated photon system 4 < Mx < 32 GeV, the t distribution has an exponential shape, dN/d\t\ ∝ exp (-b\t\), with a slope parameter b = 6.8 ± 0.9 (stat.) +1.2 -1.1 (syst.) GeV-2.