Forward elastic scattering: dynamical gluon mass and semihard interactions

The role of low-x parton dynamics in dictating the high-energy behavior of forward scattering observables at LHC energies is investigated using a QCD-based model with even-under-crossing amplitude dominance at high-energies. We explore the effects of different sets of pre- and post-LHC fine-tuned parton distributions on the forward quantities \(\sigma _{tot}\) and \(\rho \), from pp and \({\bar{p}}p\) scattering in the interval 10 GeV–13 TeV. We also investigate the role of the leading soft contribution, the low-energy cuttoff, and the energy dependence of the semihard form factor on these observables. We show that in all cases investigated the highly restrictive data on \(\rho \) parameter at \(\sqrt{s}=13\) TeV indicate that a crossing-odd component may play a crucial role in forward elastic scattering at the highest energies, namely the Odderon contribution.