Soft colour interactions as the origin of rapidity gaps in DIS

We introduce soft colour interactions as a novel mechanism to understand the observed events with large rapidity gaps in ep collisions at HERA. Colour exchanges between produced partons and colour-charges in the proton remnant modifies the colour structure for hadronization, such that colour singlet systems may appear well separated in rapidity. Our explicit model show characteristics of diffractive scattering, although no explicit pomeron dynamics have been introduced, and for non-gap events an increased forward energy flow gives agreement with data. (orig.)