SCATTERING AND PRODUCTION AT HIGH ENERGIES

A summary is given of some of the developments in the elastic scattering and production processes at high energies. First, Professor Yang's geometrical model of hadronic and nuclear collisions is reviewed. When there was some preliminary experimental evidence that the total cross section for proton–proton collision might not approach a constant at very high energies, theoretical studies were initiated to determine the high-energy asymptotic behavior in relativistic quantum gauge theory. With this starting point, the successive stages of development are:

I. Theoretical prediction of increasing total cross sections;

II. Development of phenomenology and quantitative predictions that were verified experimentally afterwards; and

III. Theory and phenomenology of production processes, especially that of the Higgs particle, at the Large Hadron Collider.

Since the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) is still being built, the last topic is at an early stage of development, and unexpected results may be forthcoming.