Hard colour singlet exchange and gaps between jets at the Tevatron

The new kind of events with a rapidity gap between two high-ET jets, observed in high energy pp̄ collisions at the Tevatron, is found to be well described by the exchange of a colour singlet gluon system in the BFKL framework. This requires going beyond the conventional asymptotic Mueller–Tang approximation, which results in qualitatively different features of the basic parton–parton scattering amplitude. Non-leading corrections to the BFKL equation are included by incorporation of the consistency constraint and the running QCD coupling. Hadronisation and other non-perturbative QCD effects are treated through a complete Monte Carlo simulation, providing a gap survival probability that varies event-by-event, facilitating comparison with experimental results.