From measurements of proton-proton elastic scattering at very small momentum transfers where the nuclear and Coulomb amplitudes interfere, we have deduced values of ρ, the ratio of the real to the imaginary forward nuclear amplitude, for energies from 50 to 400 GeV. We find that ρ increases from -0.157 ± 0.012 at 51.5 GeV to +0.039 ± 0.012 at 393 GeV, crossing zero at 280 ± 60 GeV.
Results are reported based on a study of 3114 π−p events at 205 GeV/c in the National Accelerator Laboratory 30-in. bubble chamber. The measured π−p total and elastic cross sections are 24.0 ± 0.5 and 3.0 ± 0.3 mb, respectively. The elastic differential cross section has a slope of 9.0 ± 0.7 GeV−2 for 0.03≤−t≤0.6 GeV2. The average charged-particle multiplicity for the inelastic events is 8.02 ± 0.12.
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