Model-independent femtoscopic Levy imaging for elastic proton-proton scattering

TL;DR

This paper introduces a model-independent Levy expansion method to analyze elastic proton-proton scattering data, revealing energy-dependent substructures of protons at different collision energies.

Contribution

The paper presents a novel Levy expansion technique for model-independent analysis of scattering data, applied to high-energy proton-proton collisions at 13 TeV and lower energies.

Findings

Protons exhibit a larger and darker substructure at TeV energies.

A faint substructure is observed at lower energies (23-62 GeV).

The method accurately characterizes the Fourier transform moduli of scattering data.

Abstract

A model independent Levy expansion method is introduced to describe nearly Levy shaped squared moduli of Fourier transforms. We apply this method to precisely characterize the most recent elastic scattering data of proton-proton collisions at $\sqrt{s} = 13$ TeV. The results reveal a substructure of protons, which is found to be significantly larger and darker in high energy proton-proton collisions at the TeV scale, as compared to a rather faint and apparently overlooked sub-structure, that we also identify in elastic proton-proton scattering at the ISR energy range of $\sqrt{s} = 23 - 62$ GeV.