Semihard interactions at TeV energies

We investigate the high-energy behavior of the total cross section, <a:math xmlns:a="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"> <a:msub> <a:mi>σ</a:mi> <a:mi>tot</a:mi> </a:msub> </a:math> , and the ratio of the real to imaginary parts of the scattering amplitude, <c:math xmlns:c="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"> <c:mi>ρ</c:mi> </c:math> , in both proton-proton and antiproton-proton channels. Our analysis is based on a QCD-inspired model in which the rise of the cross sections is predominantly driven by semihard processes involving gluons. We address the tension between measurements from ATLAS/ALFA and TOTEM Collaborations, showing that independent analyses of their datasets can provide statistically consistent descriptions of the overall data, even though they do not fully reproduce the central values of the <e:math xmlns:e="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"> <e:mi>ρ</e:mi> </e:math> parameter at <g:math xmlns:g="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" display="inline"> <g:msqrt> <g:mi>s</g:mi> </g:msqrt> <g:mo>=</g:mo> <g:mn>13</g:mn> <g:mtext> </g:mtext> <g:mtext> </g:mtext> <g:mi>TeV</g:mi> </g:math> . The slight discrepancy between these central values and the model’s predicted values, obtained using an asymptotic dominant crossing-even elastic scattering amplitude, points to the potential presence of an odd component in the semihard amplitude at high energies.