Unusual Effects in Particle Diffraction.

Available from UMI in association with The British Library. Requires signed TDF. We use a simple two-gluon exchange model of diffraction in order to calculate some unusual effects in particle diffraction. We first calculate the amplitude for the production of hybrid mesons in diffractive hadron scattering. This amplitude is found to be small. We then propose an explanation for the apparent quark spin-flip observed in diffractive b_1 photoproduction. Our explanation requires that the rho meson contains some glueball component in its wave function. We calculate elastic glueball scattering and find that glueballs scatter strongly. Finally, we propose a model which can help resolve the long-standing problem of the omega and phi diffractive photoproduction cross sections. The same model also explains the large diffractive isoscalar photoproduction cross section, and indicates that photoproduction may be a good place to look for glueballs.