Proton-proton interaction in constituent quarks model at LHC energies

Abstract

In this paper we consider the soft processes at LHC energies in the framework of the Constituent Quark Model (CQM). We show that this rather naive model is able to describe all available soft data at lower energies and to predict the behavior of the total cross section, elastic and diffractive cross sections at the LHC energy. It turns out that the ''input'' Pomeron, which has been used in this approach, has parameters that are close to so called ''hard'' Pomeron with rather large intercept $\Delta \approx 0.12$ and small value of the slope $\alpha'_P \approx 0.08 GeV^{-2}$. We show that the elastic amplitude has a minimum at impact parameter $b =0$ and a maximum at $b \approx 2 GeV^{-1}$. Such a behavior is a result of overlapping the parton clouds that belong to different quarks in the hadron.