Elastic scattering of protons and their structure

Abstract

The experimental data about elastic scattering of protons and their theoretical interpretations are briefly reviewed. The time delay between the conference and preparation of the manuscript allowed me to modify it and include more recent important results. Some modern problems of elastic scattering of hadrons newly revealed by experimental data obtained at the LHC are discussed. Among them are the curious findings about the behavior of real and imaginary parts of the elastic scattering amplitude at non-forward scattering. The comparison with experiment at LHC energies shows that their ratio in this region can be drastically different from its values measured at low transferred momenta. Also, it is shown how the shape and the darkness of the interaction region of colliding protons change with increase of their energies. In particular, the collisions become fully absorptive at small impact parameters at LHC energies that results in some special features of inelastic processes. These problems ask for further careful treatment in a wide energy interval.