Flavor and baryon quantum numbers and their nondiffractive renormalizations of the Pomeron

We present a theoretical review and a detailed phonomenological description of the ''flavoring'' of the bare Pomeron pole at t = 0 (i.e., the nondiffractive renormalization of its multiperipheral unitarity sum by strange quarks, charmed quarks, diquarks,...) from an ''unflavored'' intercept alpha-circumflex = 0.85 to a ''flavored'' intercept α approx. = 1.08. Experimentally, flavoring effects seem to converge rapidly; hence this number is probably close to the bare intercept of the Reggeon field theory. We treat NN, πN, and KN total cross sections and real to imaginary amplitude ratios. We do not observe oscillations. We pay particular attention to 2sigma/sub K/N - sigma/sub piN/ which rises monotonically. We present a closely related combination of inelastic diffraction cross sections which decreases monotonically, indicating that vacuum amplitudes are not simply the sum of a Pomeron pole and an ideally mixed f. In fact we argue that a Pomeron + f structure is neither compatible with flavoring nor with schemes in which flavoring is somehow absorbed away. In contrast, flavoring is required for consistency with experiment by the Chew-Rosenzweig hypothesis of the Pomeron-f identity. We close with a description of flavoring threshold effects on the Reggeon field theory at current energies