Evidence of Odderon-exchange from scaling properties of elastic scattering at TeV energies

Abstract

We study the scaling properties of the differential cross section of elastic proton-proton ($pp$) and proton-antiproton ($p\bar p$) collisions at high energies. We introduce a new scaling function, that scales -- within the experimental errors -- all the ISR data on elastic $pp$ scattering from $\sqrt{s} = 23.5$ to $62.5$ GeV to the same universal curve. We explore the scaling properties of the differential cross-sections of the elastic $pp$ and $p\bar p$ collisions in a limited TeV energy range. Rescaling the TOTEM $pp$ data from $\sqrt{s} = 7$ TeV to $2.76$ and $1.96$ TeV, and comparing it to D0 $p\bar p$ data at $1.96$ TeV, our results provide an evidence for a $t$-channel Odderon exchange at TeV energies, with a significance of at least 6.26$\sigma$. We complete this work with a model-dependent evaluation of the domain of validity of the new scaling and its violations. We find that the $H(x)$ scaling is valid, model dependently, within $200$ GeV $ \leq \sqrt{s} \leq$ $ 8$ TeV, with a $-t$ range gradually narrowing with decreasing colliding energies.