Diffraction as a critical element in soft scattering

Gribov’s partonic Pomeron provides the foundations of updated models which incorporate soft and hard scattering, so as to reproduce the recent LHC p-p cross sections. Explicitly, total, elastic, inelastic and diffrative data. Leading models are: GLM (Gotsman, Levin, Maor), KMR (Khoze, Martin, Ryskin), Kaidalov-Poghosyan and Ostapchenco.

None of these models in their pre-LHC versions reproduced the TOTEM, ALICE, ATLAS and CMS soft LHC data, needing considerable reconstructions, either in the fitting procedures (GLM), or in the details of the theoretical models. In the following, I shall relate mostly to the GLM model, emphasizing the critical role of the diffractive channels.