Measurement of the total cross section and ρ-parameter from elastic scattering in pp collisions at √s = 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector

In a special run of the LHC with β^⋆=2.5 km, proton-proton elastic-scattering events were recorded at √s = 13 TeV with an integrated luminosity of 340 μb⁻¹ using the ALFA subdetector of ATLAS in 2016. The elastic cross section was measured differentially in the Mandelstam t variable in the range from −t=2.5⋅10⁻⁴ GeV² to −t=0.46 GeV² using 6.9 million elastic-scattering candidates. This paper presents measurements of the total cross section σ_tot, parameters of the nuclear slope, and the ρ-parameter defined as the ratio of the real part to the imaginary part of the elastic-scattering amplitude in the limit t→0. These parameters are determined from a fit to the differential elastic cross section using the optical theorem and different parameterizations of the t-dependence. The results for σ_tot and ρ are

σ_tot(pp→X)=104.7±1.1mb,ρ=0.098±0.011.

The uncertainty in σ_tot is dominated by the luminosity measurement, and in ρ by imperfect knowledge of the detector alignment and by modelling of the nuclear amplitude.