We study a twist decomposition of diffractive structure functions in the diffractive deep inelastic scattering (DDIS) at HERA. At low Q2 and at large energy the data exhibit a strong excess, up to about 100%, above the twist 2 NLO DGLAP description.
The excess in consistent with higher twist effects. It is found, that complementing the DGLAP fit by twist 4 and 6 components of the GBW saturation model leads to a good description of data at low Q2. We conclude that the DDIS at HERA provides the first, strong evidence of higher twist effects in DIS.
In this contribution we briefly review the current status of the dipole models and parton saturation on the basis of results presented at the HERA-LHC workshops in the years 2006-2008. The problem of foundations of the dipole models is addressed with
in the QCD formalism. Some limitations of the models and open problems are pointed out. Furthermore, we review and compare the currently used dipole models and summarise the applications to describe various sets of HERA data. Finally we outline some of the theoretical approaches to the problem of multiple scattering and saturation.
