Energy dependence of the inelasticity in pp/p{overline{p}} collisions from experimental information on charged particle multiplicity distributions

Abstract

The dependence of the inelasticity in terms of the center of mass energy is studied in the eikonal formalism, which provides connection between elastic and inelastic channels. Due to the absence of inelasticity experimental datasets, the present analysis is based on experimental information available on the full phase space multiplicity distribution covering a large range of energy, namely 30 < sqrt{s}le 1800 GeV. Our results indicate that the decrease of inelasticity is consequence of minijets production from semihard interactions arising from the scattering of gluons carrying only a very small fractions of the momenta from their parent protons. Alternative methods of estimating the inelasticity are discussed and predictions to the LHC energies are presented.