A precise measurement of the real part of the elastic scattering amplitude at the Sp̄pS

Abstract A precise measurement of pp elastic scattering in the Coulomb-strong interaction interference region was performed at the CERN SppS Collider at a centre-of-mass energy of 541 GeV. The ratio of the real to the imaginary part of the forward elastic scattering amplitude was found to be ρ = 0.135 ± 0.015. The slope of the exponential fall off of the strong interaction part was also measured to be b = 15.5 ± 0.1 GeV −2 .