Models for High-Energy Processes

Abstract

Recent developments in the concepts and models used to describe high-energy collisions of fundamental particles are reviewed. The areas of appreciable activity in research in high-energy physics are surveyed briefly and the general framework for the description of processes at high energies is outlined. There follows a sampling of recent experimental data designed to show the extent and detail of present-day experimental results. Recent applications of Regge pole models are reviewed with emphasis on the difficulties as well as the successes of models employing only Regge poles. The various multiple-scattering models are then discussed and correlated by means of the methods of Glauber. The connection of these models with amplitudes having branch cuts in the angular-momentum plane (Regge cuts) is described, as well as some comparisons with experiment. Finite energy sum rules as a means of relating the low-energy and high-energy domains are discussed in some detail. Next, the far-reaching concept of duality whereby the direct-channel resonances are (in some sense) the crossed-channel Regge exchanges is described, along with the related ideas of exchange degeneracy, the special role of the Pomeranchon Regge pole, and duality diagrams. An explicit realization of duality is achieved in the Veneziano model. This model is discussed in some detail for the relatively simple and interesting example of pion-pion scattering. Brief mention is also made of the extensions of the Veneziano model to the $n$-particle amplitude, attempts at unitarization, and various applications. The topic of multiparticle final states is covered relatively briefly with emphasis on the applications of double Regge pole exchange to three-body final states, the calculation of proton and pion energy and angular distributions in proton-proton collisions by means of the multi-Regge exchange model, and the generation of self-consistent Regge singularities with the multi-Regge exchange model and unitarity. The final section of the review concerns recent results on pion-pion scattering phase shifts and also $K-\pi$ phase shifts, and some remarks on theorems connecting decay correlations of resonances with the mechanism of production. The literature survey ended, with a few exceptions, in May 1969.