Hadronic Total Cross-sections Through Soft Gluon Summation in Impact Parameter Space

TL;DR

This paper develops a model using soft gluon summation in impact parameter space to predict hadronic total cross-sections, highlighting the influence of the strong coupling's infrared behavior and demonstrating screening effects.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed Bloch-Nordsieck model for hadron parton distributions incorporating soft gluon effects and explores the impact of different infrared structures of the strong coupling constant.

Findings

The model predicts total proton-proton and proton-antiproton cross-sections.

Screening effects due to soft gluon emission are quantitatively demonstrated.

The dependence on the infrared behavior of $ ext{alpha}_s$ is analyzed.

Abstract

The Bloch-Nordsieck model for the parton distribution of hadrons in impact parameter space, constructed using soft gluon summation, is investigated in detail. Its dependence upon the infrared structure of the strong coupling constant $\alpha_s$ is discussed, both for finite as well as singular, but integrable, $\alpha_s$. The formalism is applied to the prediction of total proton-proton and proton-antiproton cross-sections, where screening, due to soft gluon emission from the initial valence quarks, becomes evident.