Systematic study of π±p, K±p, pp, and p¯p forward elastic scattering from 3 to 6 GeVc

Abstract
Measurements of π±p, K±p, pp, and p¯p elastic scattering are presented for incident momenta of 3, 3.65, 5, and 6 GeVc and momentum transfers typically 0.03 to 1.8 GeV2. The angle and momentum of the scattered particle were measured with the Argonne Effective Mass Spectrometer for 300 000 events, yielding 930 cross-section values with an uncertainty in absolute normalization of ±4%. Only the K+ and proton data show any significant change in slope of the forward diffraction peak with incident momentum. The particle-antiparticle crossover positions are consistent with no energy dependence, average values being 0.14 ± 0.03, 0.190 ± 0.006, and 0.162 ± 0.004 GeV2 for π' s, K' s, and protons, respectively; these errors reflect both statistics and the ±1.5% uncertainty in particle-antiparticle relative normalization. Differences between particle and antiparticle cross sections isolate interference terms between amplitudes of opposite C parity in the t channel; these differences indicate that the imaginary part of the odd-C nonflip-helicity amplitude has a J0(r(t)12) structure for t<0.8 GeV2, as predicted by strong absorption models. The cross-section differences for K± and proton-antiproton are in qualitative agreement with the predictions of ω universality, the agreement improving with increasing energy. The corresponding quark-model predictions relating the π± and K± differences failed by more than a factor of 2. We have combined our π± cross sections with other data to better determine the πN amplitudes in a model-independent way; results of this analysis are presented.