Elastic scattering and diffractive dissociation in the light of LHC data

Abstract

We study the behavior of elastic and diffractive proton dissociation cross sections at high energy. First, we describe what would be expected to be observed at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) based on conventional Regge theory. We emphasize the tension between these expectations and the recent LHC measurements, and we discuss the possibilty to modify the classic Reggeon Field Theory (RFT) in a physically-motivated way so as to accommodate the tendencies observed at the LHC. As a result, we show that we are able to achieve a "global" description of the wide variety of high energy elastic and diffractive data that are presently available, particularly from the LHC experiments. The model is based on only one pomeron pole, but includes multi-pomeron interactions and, significantly, includes the transverse momentum dependence of intermediate partons as a function of their rapidity, which provides the rapidity dependence of the multi-pomeron vertices. We give predictions for diffractive observables at LHC, and higher, energies.