Diffractive and electromagnetic processes at high energies
This workshop addresses the discussion of QED and QCD processes for which data have recently become available in pp, pA and AA-collisions at the ongoing RHIC and LHC programmes, or are expected in the upcoming runs at these accelerators. The analysis of photon initiated processes provides access to the elastic photon distribution in the proton and nucleus, can probe physics beyond the electroweak scale, and sets limits on anomalous quartic gauge couplings.
The study of asymmetric pA-collisions allows the comparison of $\gamma Pb$ to $\gamma p$ collisions, and addresses the issue of onset of gluon saturation, and nuclear gluon shadowing. The study of central exclusive production in pp-collisions at high energies addresses a variety of issues pertinent to hadron physics, such as the existence of glueballs and non-$q\bar{q}$ states in the light-quark and the strangeonia sector. Central production at the high energies of the LHC is dominated by pomeron-pomeron fusion. Of particular interest here is the question of the spin structure of the pomeron, and whether centrally produced systems can reveal information of this spin structure.