The odderon in high energy elastic pp scattering

We study the odderon contribution to elastic pp and scattering at high energies. Different models for the odderon–proton coupling are considered and their effects on the differential cross section in the dip region are investigated. We use a Regge fit by Donnachie and Landshoff as a framework and replace its odderon contribution by the different models. We consider two models for the odderon–proton impact factor proposed by Fukugita and Kwieciński and by Levin and Ryskin. In addition we construct a geometric model of the proton which allows us to put limits on the size of a possible diquark cluster in the proton. All models are able to describe the data well. The two models for the impact factor require the strong coupling constant to be fixed rather precisely. In the geometric model a relatively small diquark size is required to describe the data. Received: 1 February 2002 / Published online: 14 June 2002