Elastic scattering and single diffractive dissociation inp( $$\bar p$$ )-p collisions up to 1000 TeV from a theory with fluctuations in the eikonal

Abstract

Complete results are presented from a new description of high-energy diffractive scattering, which incorporates fluctuations in the eikonal into the general geometric picture. In the TeV range, these results differ from those of representations without fluctuations. In particular, the total and elastic cross section exhibit a domain of local growth well above asymptotic behavior, from about 20 TeV up to 800 TeV. As a consequence, the real to imaginary part ratio for the forward scattering amplitude slowly, but steadily increases to about 19% at 210 TeV. Of similar size at lower energies, the cross section for single diffractive dissociation does not follow the growth of the elastic cross section. It reaches a broad maximum, and then falls away as the collision system continues to blacken. There is a quantitative correlation to σel(s)/σtot(s). The differential cross section for diffractive dissociation reflects, in part, the effective small size of the constituent quark. We offer a speculation upon a new kind of diffractive dissociation process at super-high energies, involving pionic coherence around constituent quarks.