The critical regime of elastic scattering of protons at the LHC
I. M. Dremin
Lebedev Physical Institute of the RAS, 119991 Moscow, Russia
Abstract
It is shown that the darkness of the interaction region of protons is
governed by the ratio of the slope of the diffraction cone to the total
cross section. At LHC energies, it becomes completely absorptive at small
impact parameters. The lower limit of the ratio is determined. That imposes
some restrictions on its energy behavior. It is argued that the black disk
terminology should be replaced by the black torus.