Elastic differential cross-section measurement at $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV by TOTEM
hep-ex
/ Authors
TOTEM Collaboration, G. Antchev, P. Aspell, I. Atanassov, V. Avati, J. Baechler, C. Baldenegro Barrera, V. Berardi, M. Berretti, E. Bossini
and 67 more authors
U. Bottigli, M. Bozzo, H. Burkhardt, F. S. Cafagna, M. G. Catanesi, M. Csanád, T. Csörgő, M. Deile, F. De Leonardis, M. Doubek, D. Druzhkin, K. Eggert
/ Abstract
The TOTEM collaboration has measured the elastic proton-proton differential cross section ${\rm d}σ/{\rm d}t$ at $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV LHC energy using dedicated $β^{*}=90$ m beam optics. The Roman Pot detectors were inserted to 10$σ$ distance from the LHC beam, which allowed the measurement of the range $[0.04$ GeV$^{2}$$; 4 $GeV$^{2}$$]$ in four-momentum transfer squared $|t|$. The efficient data acquisition allowed to collect about 10$^{9}$ elastic events to precisely measure the differential cross-section including the diffractive minimum (dip), the subsequent maximum (bump) and the large-$|t|$ tail. The average nuclear slope has been found to be $B=(20.40 \pm 0.002^{\rm stat} \pm 0.01^{\rm syst})~$GeV$^{-2}$ in the $|t|$-range $0.04~$GeV$^{2}$ to $0.2~$GeV$^{2}$. The dip position is $|t_{\rm dip}|=(0.47 \pm 0.004^{\rm stat} \pm 0.01^{\rm syst})~$GeV$^{2}$. The differential cross section ratio at the bump vs. at the dip $R=1.77\pm0.01^{\rm stat}$ has been measured with high precision. The series of TOTEM elastic pp measurements show that the dip is a permanent feature of the pp differential cross-section at the TeV scale.