Off-diagonal parton distributions and their evolution

We construct off-diagonal parton distributions defined on the interval 0 less than or equal to X less than or equal to 1 starting from the off-forward distributions defined by Ji. We emphasize the particular role played by the symmetry relations in the "ERBL-like" region. We find the evolution equations for the off-diagonal distributions which conserve these symmetries. We present numerical results of the evolution, and verify that the analytic asymptotic forms of the parton distributions are reproduced. We also compare the constructed off-diagonal distributions with the non-forward distributions defined by Radyushkin and comment on the singularity structure of the basic amplitude written in terms of the off-diagonal distributions. [S0556-2821(99)08001-7].