First Measurement of the Deep--Inelastic Structure of Proton Diffraction

A measurement is presented, using data taken with the H1 detector at HERA, of the contribution of diffractive interactions to deep-inelastic electron-proton scattering. The diffractive contribution to the proton structure function is evaluated as a function of the appropriate deep-inelastic scattering variables using a class of deep-inelastic ep scattering events with no hadronic energy flow in an interval of pseudo-rapidity adjacent to the proton beam direction. The dependence of this contribution on x-pomeron is consistent with both a diffractive interpretation and a factorisable ep diffractive cross section. A first measurement of the deep-inelastic structure of the pomeron in the form of a factorised structure function is presented. This structure function is observed to be consistent with scale invariance.