Impact-Picture Phenomenology for ${\pi }^{\pm }p,K^{\pm }p$ and $pp,\bar{p}p$

Abstract

We present an extension to ${\pi }^{\pm }p$ and $K^{\pm }p$ elastic scattering at high energies of the impact-picture phenomenology we first proposed more than twenty years ago, for $pp$ and $\bar{p}p$ elastic scattering. We show, in particular, that the analytic form of the opacity function for the proton obtained previously is compatible with the experimental results on $\pi p$ and $Kp$ elastic scattering at high energies. It is proposed that ${\pi }^{\pm }$ and $K^{\pm }$ external beams be provided from CERN-LHC, so that their elastic scattering from protons can be studied at higher energies. Our phenomenology for $pp$ and $\bar{p}p$ elastic scattering is updated by including new data and we give predictions for future experiments at BNL-RHIC and CERN-LHC.

Comments: 28 pages, 18 eps figures