Is There a Hollow Inside the Proton?

Abstract

We discuss a recently proposed interpretation of some model descriptions of the proton-proton elastic scattering data as a manifestation of alleged relative transparency of the central part of the interaction region in the impact parameter space. We argue that the presence of nonzero real part of the elastic scattering amplitude in the unitarity condition enables to conserve the traditional interpretation.

Comments: 7 pages, 4 figures; v2: some clarifications added. A talk at the XXXI-th International Workshop on High Energy Physics "Critical points in the modern particle physics", July 5-7, 2017, Protvino, Moscow region, Russia