Where Do Diffractive Nucleons Go?

Nucleon and pion-nucleon distributions from the diffractive component in pp collisions are analysed. Diffractive events are assumed to come from a mechanism pp → N*p, in which a proton is diffractively excited to a nova N*. The decay properties of N* are determined by assuming that a Pomeron-proton collision behaves as a proton-proton collision. Correlations within the diffractive component are computed and seen to be numerically small. Even interference with the pionization component does not reproduce the observed pattern of pion (in the plateau)-proton (in the fragmentation region) correlations. This may imply the existence of long-range correlations within the pionization component.