Hard Exclusive and Diffractive Processes in QCD

Exclusive and semi-exclusive processes, the diffractive dissociation of hadrons into jets, and hard diffractive processes such as vector meson leptoproduction provide new testing grounds for QCD and essential information on the structure of light-cone wavefunctions of hadrons, particularly the pion distribution amplitude. I review the basic features of the leading-twist QCD predictions and the problems and challenges of studying QCD at the amplitude level. The application of the light-cone formalism to the exclusive semi-leptonic decay of heavy hadrons is also discussed.