A New Method for the Determination of the Real Part of the Hadron Elastic Scattering Amplitude at Small Angles and High Energies

Abstract

A new method for the determination of the real part of the elastic scattering amplitude is examined for high energy proton-proton elastic scattering at small momentum transfer. This method allows us to decrease the number of model assumptions, to obtain the real part in a narrow region of momentum transfer and to test different models. The real part is computed at a given point t_min near t=0 from the known Coulomb amplitude. Hence one obtains an important constraint on the real part of the forward scattering amplitude and therefore on the rho-parameter (measuring the ratio of the real to imaginary part of the scattering amplitude at t=0), which can be tested at LHC.

Comments: 10 pages and 5 figures. Final published form in Physics Letters B