“…although asymptopia may be very far away indeed, the path to it is not through a desert but through a flourishing region of exciting Physics…” -Elliot Leader in CERN Courier Large Hadron Collider (LHC) Total and Elastic Measurement (TOTEM experiment) We are indeed entering a region of exciting Physics: the 10 TeV c.m. energy region. TOTEM: at LHC at an unprecedented c.m. energy of 14 TeV- an ambitious and challenging task.

pp elastic at in the momentum transfer range has been predicted by three different groups using three different models: Impact-picture model based on the Cheng-Wu calculations of QCD tower diagrams (Bourrely, Soffer, and Wu) Eikonalized Pomeron-Reggeon model using conventional Regge pole approach, but with multiple Pomeron-Reggeon exchanges included (Desgrolard, Giffon, Martynov, and Predazzi) Nucleon-structure model that describes the nucleon as having an outer cloud of quark-antiquark ground state, an inner core of topological baryonic charge, and a still smaller quark-bag of valence quarks (Islam, Luddy, and Prokudin). QCD inspired eikonalized model has also been proposed to predict pp at LHC for (Block, Gregores, Halzen, and Pancheri).

Diffraction scattering Hard scattering

Frankfurt, Strickman, Weiss, and Zhalov (hep-ph/0412260) General properties associated with the phenomenon of diffraction:     1. Froissart – Martin bound    2. Derivative dispersion relation 3. Auberson-Kinoshita-Martin scaling 4. Crossing even Frankfurt, Strickman, Weiss, and Zhalov (hep-ph/0412260)

Hard scattering amplitude due to exchange

Physical structure of the nucleon AIP Conf. Proceedings, Vol. 698(2003) p.142, hep-ph/0307355 Luddy, Prokudin, MMI

Hard collision of valence quarks

New Features: Probability amplitude of a quark to have, say, momentum when the proton has momentum in the c.m. frame. Quark-quark elastic amplitude at high energy and large momentum transfer, which is in the domain of perturbative QCD. Balitsky, Fadin, Kuraev, and Lipatov (BFKL) Brodsky, Fadin, Kim, Lipatov, and Pivovarov BFKL Pomeron with next to leading order corrections included: Hard Pomeron

Perturbative QCD quark counting rules : structure factor Perturbative QCD quark counting rules Matveev, Muradian, and Tavkhelidze Brodsky and Farrar

Concluding Remarks Our phenomenological investigation shows that: Evidence of QCD hard Pomeron contribution will be seen at large |t| pp elastic scattering at LHC. The nucleon has a composite structure with an outer cloud of condensed ground state, an inner core of topological baryonic charge, and a still smaller quark-bag of valence quarks. Precise measurement of by the TOTEM group will be able to test the predictions of our model.