High Energy Elastic and Diffractive Cross Sections

Abstract

We present a `global' description of the wide variety of high energy elastic and diffractive data that are presently available, particularly from the LHC experiments. The model is based on only one pomeron pole, but includes multi-pomeron interactions and, significantly, includes the transverse momentum dependence of intermediate partons as a function of their rapidity, which provides the rapidity dependence of the multi-pomeron vertices. We give predictions for diffractive observables at LHC energies.

Comments: 24 pages, 6 figures, version to be published in Eur. Phys. J. C