Precise Comparison Of Antiproton Proton And Proton Proton Forward Elastic-Scattering At Square-Root-S=24.3 Gev

We report results from a measurement of antiproton-proton and proton-proton small-angle elastic scattering at √ s = 24.3 GeV in the range 0.001 ⩽ | t | ⩽ 0.06 (GeV/ c ) 2 . The measurement was performed at the CERN p p Collider by using silicon detectors to observe protons recoiling from a hydrogen cluster-jet target intercepting the stored p and p beams. Fits to the measured differential cross sections yield the ratio of the real to the imaginary part of the forward nuclear scattering amplitude ρ and the nuclear slope parameter b for both p p and pp. We find that the difference Δρ = ρ ( p p ) − ρ( pp ) = 0.031 ± 0.010 agrees with conventional fits and disagrees with the “odderon” fit designed to accommodate the recent UA4 measurement of ρ( p p) at 546 GeV.