  In a recent paper (hep-ph/0608271) we describe a new approach to rapidity gap
survival (RGS) in the production of high-mass systems (H = dijet, Higgs, etc.)
in exclusive double-gap diffractive pp scattering, pp -> p + H + p. It is based
on the idea that hard and soft interactions are approximately independent (QCD
factorization), and allows us to calculate the RGS probability in a
model-independent way in terms of the gluon generalized parton distributions
(GPDs) in the colliding protons and the pp elastic scattering amplitude. Here
we focus on the transverse momentum dependence of the cross section. By
measuring the "diffraction pattern," one can perform detailed tests of the
interplay of hard and soft interactions, and even extract information about the
gluon GPD in the proton from the data.
