A Transient New Coherent Condition of Matter: The Signal for New Physics in Hadronic Diffractive Scattering

Abstract

We demonstrate the existence of an anomalous structure in the data on the diffractive elastic scattering of hadrons at high energies and small momentum transfer. We analyze five sets of experimental data on $p(\overline{p})-p $ scattering from five different experiments with colliding beams, ranging from the first-- and second--generation experiments at $\sqrt{s} = 53 $ GeV to the most recent experiments at 546 GeV and at 1800 GeV. All of the data sets exhibit a localized anomalous structure in momentum transfer. We represent the anomalous behavior by a phenomenological formula. This is based upon the idea that a transient coherent condition of matter occurs in some of the intermediate inelastic states which give rise, via unitarity, to diffractive elastic scattering. The Fourier--Bessel transform into momentum--transfer space of a spatial oscillatory behavior of matter in the impact--parameter plane results in a small piece of the diffractive amplitude which exhibits a localized anomalous behavior near a definite value of $-t $. In addition, we emphasize possible signals coming directly from such a new condition of matter that may be present in current experiments on inelastic processes.