Proton-proton forward scattering at the LHC

Abstract

Recently the TOTEM experiment at the LHC has released measurements at $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV of the proton-proton total cross section, ${\sigma }_{tot}$, and the ratio of the real to imaginary parts of the forward elastic amplitude, $\rho$. Since then an intense debate on the $C$-parity asymptotic nature of the scattering amplitude was initiated. We examine the proton-proton and the antiproton-proton forward data above 10 GeV in the context of an eikonal QCD-based model, where nonperturbative effects are readily included via a QCD effective charge. We show that, despite an overall satisfactory description of the forward data is obtained by a model in which the scattering amplitude is dominated by only crossing-even elastic terms, there is evidence that the introduction of a crossing-odd term may improve the agreement with the measurements of $\rho$ at $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV. In the Regge language the dominant even(odd)-under-crossing object is the so called Pomeron (Odderon).

Comments: 5 pages, 2 figures, 1 table. Phenomenological approach revised, results and conclusions changed, suggesting now the presence of Odderon effects in forward scattering (once confirmed the TOTEM data at 13 TeV)