Evidence of Odderon-exchange from scaling properties of elastic scattering at TeV energies

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new scaling function for elastic scattering data, providing evidence for Odderon exchange at TeV energies through analysis of proton-proton and proton-antiproton collisions.

Contribution

The study presents a novel universal scaling function that unifies elastic scattering data across a wide energy range and offers evidence for Odderon exchange at TeV energies.

Findings

Evidence for Odderon exchange with at least 6.26σ significance.

Universal scaling function successfully unifies ISR data across energies.

Scaling validity within 200 GeV to 8 TeV, with narrowing t-range at lower energies.

Abstract

We study the scaling properties of the differential cross section of elastic proton-proton ($pp$) and proton-antiproton ($p\bar p$) collisions at high energies. We introduce a new scaling function, that scales -- within the experimental errors -- all the ISR data on elastic $pp$ scattering from $\sqrt{s} = 23.5$ to $62.5$ GeV to the same universal curve. We explore the scaling properties of the differential cross-sections of the elastic $pp$ and $p\bar p$ collisions in a limited TeV energy range. Rescaling the TOTEM $pp$ data from $\sqrt{s} = 7$ TeV to $2.76$ and $1.96$ TeV, and comparing it to D0 $p\bar p$ data at $1.96$ TeV, our results provide an evidence for a $t$-channel Odderon exchange at TeV energies, with a significance of at least 6.26$\sigma$. We complete this work with a model-dependent evaluation of the domain of validity of the new scaling and its violations. We find that the $H(x)$ scaling is valid, model dependently, within $200$ GeV $ \leq \sqrt{s} \leq$ $ 8$ TeV, with a $-t$ range gradually narrowing with decreasing colliding energies.