https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-013-2456-0
Regular Article - Experimental Physics
Measurement of inelastic, single- and double-diffraction cross sections in proton–proton collisions at the LHC with ALICE
1
CERN, 1211, Geneva 23, Switzerland
2
Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, Puebla, Mexico
3
Bogolyubov Institute for Theoretical Physics, Kiev, Ukraine
4
Budker Institute for Nuclear Physics, Novosibirsk, Russia
5
California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo, California, United States
6
Central China Normal University, Wuhan, China
7
Centre de Calcul de l’IN2P3, Villeurbanne, France
8
Centro de Aplicaciones Tecnológicas y Desarrollo Nuclear (CEADEN), Havana, Cuba
9
Centro de Investigaciones Energéticas Medioambientales y Tecnológicas (CIEMAT), Madrid, Spain
10
Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados (CINVESTAV), Mexico City and Mérida, Mexico
11
Centro Fermi – Centro Studi e Ricerche e Museo Storico della Fisica “Enrico Fermi”, Rome, Italy
12
Chicago State University, Chicago, United States
13
Commissariat à l’Energie Atomique, IRFU, Saclay, France
14
Departamento de Física de Partículas and IGFAE, Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, Santiago de Compostela, Spain
15
Department of Physics Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, India
16
Department of Physics and Technology, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway
17
Department of Physics, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio, United States
18
Department of Physics, Sejong University, Seoul, South Korea
19
Department of Physics, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway
20
Dipartimento di Fisica dell’Università and Sezione INFN, Bologna, Italy
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Dipartimento di Fisica dell’Università and Sezione INFN, Trieste, Italy
22
Dipartimento di Fisica dell’Università and Sezione INFN, Turin, Italy
23
Dipartimento di Fisica dell’Università and Sezione INFN, Cagliari, Italy
24
Dipartimento di Fisica dell’Università ‘La Sapienza’ and Sezione INFN, Rome, Italy
25
Dipartimento di Fisica e Astronomia dell’Università and Sezione INFN, Catania, Italy
26
Dipartimento di Fisica dell’Università e Astronomia and Sezione INFN, Padova, Italy
27
Dipartimento di Fisica ‘E.R. Caianiello’ dell’Università and Gruppo Collegato INFN, Salerno, Italy
28
Dipartimento di Scienze e Innovazione Tecnologica dell’Università del Piemonte Orientale and Gruppo Collegato INFN, Alessandria, Italy
29
Dipartimento Interateneo di Fisica ‘M. Merlin’ and Sezione INFN, Bari, Italy
30
Division of Experimental High Energy Physics, University of Lund, Lund, Sweden
31
European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), Geneva, Switzerland
32
Fachhochschule Köln, Köln, Germany
33
Faculty of Engineering, Bergen University College, Bergen, Norway
34
Faculty of Mathematics, Physics and Informatics, Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia
35
Faculty of Nuclear Sciences and Physical Engineering, Czech Technical University in Prague, Prague, Czech Republic
36
Faculty of Science, P.J. Šafárik University, Košice, Slovakia
37
Frankfurt Institute for Advanced Studies, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany
38
Gangneung-Wonju National University, Gangneung, South Korea
39
Helsinki Institute of Physics (HIP) and University of Jyväskylä, Jyväskylä, Finland
40
Hiroshima University, Hiroshima, Japan
41
Indian Institute of Technology Bombay (IIT), Mumbai, India
42
Indian Institute of Technology Indore (IIT), Indore, India
43
Institut de Physique Nucléaire d’Orsay (IPNO), Université Paris-Sud, CNRS-IN2P3, Orsay, France
44
Institute for High Energy Physics, Protvino, Russia
45
Institute for Nuclear Research, Academy of Sciences, Moscow, Russia
46
Nikhef, National Institute for Subatomic Physics and Institute for Subatomic Physics of Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands
47
Institute for Theoretical and Experimental Physics, Moscow, Russia
48
Institute of Experimental Physics, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Košice, Slovakia
49
Institute of Physics, Bhubaneswar, India
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Institute of Physics, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Prague, Czech Republic
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Institute of Space Sciences (ISS), Bucharest, Romania
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Institut für Informatik, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany
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Institut für Kernphysik, Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt, Frankfurt, Germany
54
Institut für Kernphysik, Technische Universität Darmstadt, Darmstadt, Germany
55
Institut für Kernphysik, Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität Münster, Münster, Germany
56
Instituto de Ciencias Nucleares, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City, Mexico
57
Instituto de Física, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Mexico City, Mexico
58
Institut of Theoretical Physics, University of Wroclaw, Wroclaw, Poland
59
Institut Pluridisciplinaire Hubert Curien (IPHC), Université de Strasbourg, CNRS-IN2P3, Strasbourg, France
60
Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR), Dubna, Russia
61
KFKI Research Institute for Particle and Nuclear Physics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest, Hungary
62
Kirchhoff-Institut für Physik, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany
63
Korea Institute of Science and Technology Information, Daejeon, South Korea
64
Laboratoire de Physique Corpusculaire (LPC), Clermont Université, Université Blaise Pascal, CNRS–IN2P3, Clermont-Ferrand, France
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Laboratoire de Physique Subatomique et de Cosmologie (LPSC), Université Joseph Fourier, CNRS-IN2P3, Institut Polytechnique de Grenoble, Grenoble, France
66
Laboratori Nazionali di Frascati, INFN, Frascati, Italy
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Laboratori Nazionali di Legnaro, INFN, Legnaro, Italy
68
Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Berkeley, California, United States
69
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, Livermore, California, United States
70
Moscow Engineering Physics Institute, Moscow, Russia
71
National Institute for Physics and Nuclear Engineering, Bucharest, Romania
72
Niels Bohr Institute, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark
73
Nikhef, National Institute for Subatomic Physics, Amsterdam, Netherlands
74
Nuclear Physics Institute, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Řež u Prahy, Czech Republic
75
Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, United States
76
Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute, Gatchina, Russia
77
Physics Department, Creighton University, Omaha, Nebraska, United States
78
Physics Department, Panjab University, Chandigarh, India
79
Physics Department, University of Athens, Athens, Greece
80
Physics Department, University of Cape Town, iThemba LABS, Cape Town, South Africa
81
Physics Department, University of Jammu, Jammu, India
82
Physics Department, University of Rajasthan, Jaipur, India
83
Physikalisches Institut, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität Heidelberg, Heidelberg, Germany
84
Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, United States
85
Pusan National University, Pusan, South Korea
86
Research Division and ExtreMe Matter Institute EMMI, GSI Helmholtzzentrum für Schwerionenforschung, Darmstadt, Germany
87
Rudjer Bošković Institute, Zagreb, Croatia
88
Russian Federal Nuclear Center (VNIIEF), Sarov, Russia
89
Russian Research Centre Kurchatov Institute, Moscow, Russia
90
Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics, Kolkata, India
91
School of Physics and Astronomy, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, United Kingdom
92
Sección Física, Departamento de Ciencias, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, Lima, Peru
93
Sezione INFN, Trieste, Italy
94
Sezione INFN, Padova, Italy
95
Sezione INFN, Turin, Italy
96
Sezione INFN, Rome, Italy
97
Sezione INFN, Cagliari, Italy
98
Sezione INFN, Bologna, Italy
99
Sezione INFN, Bari, Italy
100
Sezione INFN, Catania, Italy
101
Soltan Institute for Nuclear Studies, Warsaw, Poland
102
Nuclear Physics Group, STFC Daresbury Laboratory, Daresbury, United Kingdom
103
SUBATECH, Ecole des Mines de Nantes, Université de Nantes, CNRS-IN2P3, Nantes, France
104
Technical University of Split FESB, Split, Croatia
105
The Henryk Niewodniczanski Institute of Nuclear Physics, Polish Academy of Sciences, Cracow, Poland
106
Physics Department, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX, United States
107
Universidad Autónoma de Sinaloa, Culiacán, Mexico
108
Universidade de São Paulo (USP), São Paulo, Brazil
109
Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP), Campinas, Brazil
110
Université de Lyon, Université Lyon 1, CNRS/IN2P3, IPN-Lyon, Villeurbanne, France
111
University of Houston, Houston, Texas, United States
112
University of Technology and Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna, Austria
113
University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee, United States
114
University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan
115
University of Tsukuba, Tsukuba, Japan
116
Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany
117
Variable Energy Cyclotron Centre, Kolkata, India
118
V. Fock Institute for Physics, St. Petersburg State University, St. Petersburg, Russia
119
Warsaw University of Technology, Warsaw, Poland
120
Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan, United States
121
Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, United States
122
Yerevan Physics Institute, Yerevan, Armenia
123
Yildiz Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey
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Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea
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Zentrum für Technologietransfer und Telekommunikation (ZTT), Fachhochschule Worms, Worms, Germany
* e-mail: Martin.Poghosyan@cern.ch
Received:
12
September
2012
Revised:
28
January
2013
Published online:
8
June
2013
Measurements of cross sections of inelastic and diffractive processes in proton–proton collisions at LHC energies were carried out with the ALICE detector. The fractions of diffractive processes in inelastic collisions were determined from a study of gaps in charged particle pseudorapidity distributions: for single diffraction (diffractive mass M
X
<200 GeV/c
2) 
, and 
, respectively at centre-of-mass energies 
; for double diffraction (for a pseudorapidity gap Δη>3) σ
DD/σ
INEL=0.11±0.03,0.12±0.05, and 
, respectively at . To measure the inelastic cross section, beam properties were determined with van der Meer scans, and, using a simulation of diffraction adjusted to data, the following values were obtained: 
mb at 
and 
at 
. The single- and double-diffractive cross sections were calculated combining relative rates of diffraction with inelastic cross sections. The results are compared to previous measurements at proton–antiproton and proton–proton colliders at lower energies, to measurements by other experiments at the LHC, and to theoretical models.
© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg and Società Italiana di Fisica, 2013
