https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-011-1601-x
Regular Article – Theoretical Physics
Determination of the forward slope in pp and 
elastic scattering up to LHC energy
1
Département de Physique, Faculté des Sciences de Luminy, Université de la Méditerranée-Aix-Marseille II, 13288, Marseille Cedex 09, France
2
Physics Department, Temple University, Barton Hall, 1900 N, 13th Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19122-6082, USA
3
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, 02138, USA
4
Theoretical Physics Division, CERN, 1211, Geneva 23, Switzerland
* e-mail: jacques.soffer@gmail.com
Received:
2
November
2010
Revised:
21
February
2011
Published online:
25
March
2011
In the analysis of experimental data on pp (or 
) elastic differential cross section it is customary to define an average forward slope b in the form exp (−b|t|), where t is the momentum transfer. Taking as working example the results of experiments at Tevatron and SPS, we will show with the help of the impact picture approach that this simplifying assumption hides interesting information on the complex non-flip scattering amplitude, and that the slope b is not a constant. We investigate the variation of this slope parameter, including a model-independent way to extract this information from an accurate measurement of the elastic differential cross section. An extension of our results to the LHC energy domain is presented in view of future experiments.
© Springer-Verlag / Società Italiana di Fisica, 2011
