https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-013-2503-x
Regular Article - Theoretical Physics
Diffraction at the LHC
1
Institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology, University of Durham, Durham, DH1 3LE, UK
2
Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute, NRC Kurchatov Institute, Gatchina, St. Petersburg, 188300, Russia
* e-mail: V.A.Khoze@durham.ac.uk
Received:
10
June
2013
Revised:
8
July
2013
Published online:
27
July
2013
We show that the diffractive pp (and ) data (on σ
tot, dσ
el/dt, proton dissociation into low-mass systems,
, and high-mass dissociation, dσ/d(Δη)) in a wide energy range from CERN-ISR to LHC energies, may be described in a two-channel eikonal model with only one ‘effective’ pomeron. By allowing the pomeron coupling to the diffractive eigenstates to depend on the collider energy (as is expected theoretically) we are able to explain the low value of
measured at the LHC. We calculate the survival probability, S
2, of a rapidity gap to survive ‘soft rescattering’. We emphasise that the values found for S
2 are particularly sensitive to the detailed structure of the diffractive eigenstates.
© Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg and Società Italiana di Fisica, 2013