Elastic scattering in geometrical model

Abstract

The experimental data on proton–proton elastic and inelastic scattering emerging from the measurements at the Large Hadron Collider, calls for an efficient model to fit the data. We have examined the optical, geometrical picture and we have found the simplest, linear dependence of this model parameters on the logarithm of the interaction energy with the significant change of the respective slopes at one point corresponding to the energy of about 300 GeV. The logarithmic dependence observed at high energies allows one to extrapolate the proton–proton elastic, total (and inelastic) cross sections to ultra high energies seen in cosmic rays events which makes a solid justification of the extrapolation to very high energy domain of cosmic rays and could help us to interpret the data from an astrophysical and a high energy physics point of view.

Keywords

• Elastic scattering
• Optical model
• Cross section
• Cosmic rays