Scaling violations: Connections between elastic and inelastic hadron scattering in a geometrical approach

TL;DR

This paper develops a geometrical impact parameter model linking elastic and inelastic hadron scattering, explaining scaling violations and multiplicity distributions in proton-proton and antiproton-proton collisions.

Contribution

It introduces a geometrical approach based on impact parameters that connects elastic and inelastic scattering, providing analytical insights into scaling violations.

Findings

Successful description of elastic scattering data

Quantitative correlation of scaling violations

Insight into geometrical evolution of hadronic constituents

Abstract

Starting from a short range expansion of the inelastic overlap function, capable of describing quite well the elastic pp and $\bar{p}p$ scattering data, we obtain extensions to the inelastic channel, through unitarity and an impact parameter approach. Based on geometrical arguments we infer some characteristics of the elementary hadronic process and this allows an excellent description of the inclusive multiplicity distributions in $pp$ and $\bar{p}p$ collisions. With this approach we quantitatively correlate the violations of both geometrical and KNO scaling in an analytical way. The physical picture from both channels is that the geometrical evolution of the hadronic constituents is principally reponsible for the energy dependence of the physical quantities rather than the dynamical (elementary) interaction itself.