Hadron Diffractive Processes: the Structure of Soft Pomeron and Colour Screening

Abstract

On the basis of the experimental data on diffractive processes in $πp$, $pp$ and $p \bar p$ collisions at intermediate, moderately high and high energies, we restore the scattering amplitude related to the $t$-channel exchange by vacuum quantum numbers by taking account of the diffractive $s$-channel rescatterings. At intermediate and moderately high energies, the $t$-channel exchange amplitude turns, with a good accuracy, into an effective pomeron which renders the results of the additive quark model. At superhigh energies the scattering amplitude provides a Froissart-type behaviour, with an asymptotic universality of cross sections such as $σ^{tot}_{πp}/σ^{tot}_{pp} \to 1$ at $s \to \infty$. The quark structure of hadrons being taken into account at the level of constituent quarks, the cross sections of pion and proton (antiproton) in the impact parameter space of quarks, $σ_π(\vec {r}_{1\perp},\vec {r}_{2\perp};s)$ and $σ_p(\vec {r}_{1\perp},\vec {r}_{2\perp},\vec {r}_{3\perp};s)$, are found as functions of $s$. These cross sections implicate the phenomenon of colour screening: they tend to zero at $|\vec r_{i\perp}-\vec r_{k\perp}| \to 0$. The effective colour screening radius for pion (proton) is found for different $s$. The predictions for the diffractive cross sections at superhigh energies are presented.