High energy proton-proton elastic scattering at the Large Hadron Collider and nucleon structure

To gain insight into the structure of the nucleon, we pursue the development of the phenomenological model of Islam et al. (IIFS model) for high energy elastic pp and p¯p scattering. We determine the energy dependence of the parameters of the IIFS model using the available elastic differential cross section data from SPS Collider and Tevatron and the known asymptotic behavior of σtot (s) and ρ(s) from dispersion relation calculations and more recent analyses of Cudell et al. (COMPETE Collaboration). Next, we incorporate a high energy elastic valence quark-quark scattering amplitude into the model based on BFKL pomeron to describe small impact parameter (large : t:) pp collisions. Finally, we predict the pp elastic differential cross section at the unprecedented c.m. energy of s = 14.0 TeV at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). This prediction assumes crucial significance---because of an approved experiment at LHC: TOTal and Elastic Measurement (TOTEM). The TOTEM group plans to measure pp elastic dσ/dt at 14.0 TeV all the way from momentum transfer :t: = 0 to :t: ≃ 10 GeV 2. Their measurement will stringently test not only the diffraction and ω-exchange descriptions of the original IIFS model, but also the additional valence quark-quark scattering contribution that we find to be dominant for large :t:. Successful quantitative verification of the predicted dσ/dt will mean that our picture of the nucleon with an outer cloud of qq¯ condensed ground state, an inner core of topological baryonic charge, and a still smaller core of massless valence quarks provides a realistic description of nucleon structure.