The effect of higher order corrections to the BFKL equation on the perturbative pomeron

We discuss the significance of the next-to-leading order term in the BFKL equation on the energy dependence of diffractive processes controlled by the perturbative QCD pomeron. It is shown that whereas the large negative corrections do indeed reduce the rate of growth of diffractive amplitudes with increasing energy, this reduction is considerably less than previously expected.