On the Shape of Nucleons at High Energies

Abstract

A scenario of the evolution of the shape of nucleons with increasing energy is described in the framework of an extended parton model, which consistently takes into account the transverse motion of the partons. At the energy E up to LHC, the nucleons have the form of a spheroid which expands as lnE in the transverse directions and grows linearly in E in the longitudinal direction. With a further increase in the energy, a mode of correlated behavior of the partons is established, which stops the longitudinal growth. Simultaneously, the expansion in the transverse directions changes to lnE, and a hollow mostly free of partons is formed inside the nucleons along the central axis in the direction of their motion. Numerical estimates of the corresponding parameters are obtained.

Keywords

• proton shape
• interaction region
• impact parameter
• cross section
• diffraction cone
• parton model