Elastic Proton-Proton Scattering at 1.35, 2.1, and 2.9 BeV

As a part of our program to study $p-p$ collisions at Cosmotron energies, the differential cross sections for elastic scattering were measured at five laboratory angles between 2.3° and 17° for each incident energy. Total elastic cross sections obtained by integration are 21.4±1.4, 17.0±0.8, and 14.7±0.7 mb at 1.35, 2.1, and 2.9 BeV, respectively. The angular distribution as a function of the momentum transfer, exhibits a forward diffraction peak, the width of which shrinks slightly as the incident energy increases. The experimental results were fitted by simple optical model calculations and also compared with the predictions of the composite particle theory of Chew and Frautschi.