Nucleon structure and high energy scattering

If the pomeron is generated by a two gluon exchange there is no a priori reason for a drastic suppression of three gluon exchange with negative parity and charge parity. This would lead to an unacceptably large difference between p p and p p scattering. It is shown that a natural suppression of the C = P = −1 contribution to high energy scattering is given by a cluster structure of the nucleon.