Diffractive production of heavy flavors and the internal structure of the pomeron

High-energy hadron colliders can be used to excite the (anti) proton to a high-mass object via pomeron-nucleon interactions. In such a reaction heavy flavors can be produced via the gluon-gluon fusion process. Since the corresponding cross section depends on the gluonic structure of the pomeron, the heavy-flavor production in diffractive processes could be used as a tool to investigate the internal structure of the pomeron. (orig.)