A comprehensive model of soft interactions in the LHC era

Abstract

In this review we present our model which is an example of the self-consistent approach that incorporates our theoretical understanding of long distance physics, based both on N = 4 SYM for strong coupling and on the matching with the perturbative QCD approach. We demonstrate how important and decisive the LHC data were on strong interactions which led us to a set of the phenomenological parameters that fully confirmed our theoretical expectations, and produced a new picture of the strong interaction at high energy. We also show how far we have come towards creating a framework for the description of minimal bias events for high energy scattering without generating Monte Carlo codes.