Proton–proton total cross section shows unexpected rise
DOI: 10.1063/1.3128045
It has been generally believed for proton–proton collisions that as the energy was raised beyond present experimental limits, the total cross section would continue to be constant at about 39 millibarns. Now CERN has announced that two independent experiments at the CERN Intersecting Storage Rings have found that the cross section increases by about 10% as the center‐of‐mass energy goes from 23 to 53 GeV, or in equivalent laboratory energies from 300 to 1500 GeV. The increase is consistent with a theoretical prediction made three years ago by Hung Cheng (MIT) and Tai Tsun Wu (Harvard University), who predicted that the total cross section would increase as