Lessons from LHC elastic and diffractive data

Abstract

In the light of LHC data, we discuss the global description of all high-energy elastic and diffractive data, using a one-pomeron model, but including multi-pomeron interactions. The LHC data indicate the need of a kt(s) behaviour, where kt is the gluon transverse momentum along the partonic ladder structure which describes the pomeron. We also discuss tensions in the data, as well as the t dependence of the slope of dσel/dt in the small t domain.