The First Year at LHC: Diffractive Physics

At the LHC, diffractive physics will be explored by the dedicated experiment TOTEM whose Technical Design Report has been approved in Summer 2004. The experimental programme will be carried out partly in TOTEM standalone mode for purely forward phenomena like elastic scattering, and partly in collaboration with CMS for processes requiring a full rapidity coverage. ATLAS and ALICE are interested in diffraction for a later stage. This article presents the TOTEM/CMS running scenario for diffractive physics in the first year of LHC. We discuss which processes are within reach and with which statistics they can be measured.