Reflective Elastic Scattering at LHC

TL;DR

This paper explores the impact of reflective scattering at LHC energies, revealing potential decreases in matter density, establishing bounds on scattering amplitudes, and constraining odderon contributions in high-energy hadron and heavy nuclei collisions.

Contribution

It introduces a novel analysis of reflective scattering effects at LHC energies, deriving bounds on scattering amplitudes and implications for matter density and odderon contributions.

Findings

Reflective scattering may decrease matter density beyond LHC energies.

Derived unitarity bounds are tighter for the real part of the elastic amplitude.

Limits restrict possible odderon contributions in high-energy collisions.

Abstract

We discuss effects of reflective scattering for hadron and heavy nuclei collisions at the LHC and asymptotical energies. It is shown that the reflective scattering might lead to decreasing matter density with energy beyond the LHC energies. Limiting form of energy dependence of hadron density is obtained. Unitarity upper bound for the absolute value of the real part of elastic scattering amplitude and two-particle inelastic binary reactions amplitudes in impact parameter representation is two times less than the corresponding bound for the imaginary part of the elastic scattering amplitude. The former limit restricts a possible odderon contribution.