Proton–proton interaction in constituent quarks model at LHC energies

In this paper we consider soft processes at LHC energies in the framework of the constituent quark model. We show that this rather naive model is able to describe all available soft process data at lower energies and to predict the behavior of the total cross section, the elastic and diffractive cross sections at LHC energy. It turns out that the “input” pomeron that has been used in this approach has parameters that are close to the so called “hard” pomeron with rather large intercept Δ≈0.12 and small value of the slope α^′ _P≈0.08 GeV^-2. We show that the elastic amplitude has a minimum at impact parameter b=0 and a maximum at b≈2 GeV^-1. Such a behavior is the result of overlapping of the parton clouds that belong to the different quarks in the hadron.