Unified Model for Elastic Scattering and Inclusive Reactions

Abstract

A unitary model for the particle production is presented on the basis of the eikonal for­ malism and the Regge theory. The elastic and production processes are treated in a unified way and the diffraction in the former is described explicitly as a shadow of the latter. In our model, the exchange of the Regge cut is important in the particle production and the self-consistency is retained between the input and output forward two-body amplitudes. Our model reproduces rising cross sections and the shrinkage effect in the forward slope parameter. As for the production processes, the increasing average multiplicity, the sharp cutoff of the transverse momentum and the wide rapidity plateau with a bump structure in inclusive spectra are reproduced. High energy experiments at FNALn and at CERN-ISR2J have revealed several regularities in hadronic processes. In proton-proton collisions in the range 300<s <3000 Ge V 2 , s being c.m.s. energy squared, rises of total, elastic and inelastic cross sections are observed. In addition, the forward peak in the elastic differential cross section shrinks and the dip position decreases correspondingly. Variations of all these quantities are approximately the same. The forward real to imaginary ratio of the elastic amplitude is positive but close to zero. It follows from these facts that the effective interaction range between hadrons expands at high energies. In other words, the elastic amplitude in the impact parameter space T(b, s) has an asymptotic behavior of the form