Is a nucleon core being seen in high-energy elastic pp scattering at large momentum transfer?

Recently proton-proton elastic scattering has been measured at CERN ISR for the equivalent laboratory energy 1496 GeV and at Fermilab for the laboratory energy 201 GeV to probe the momentum transfer region -t (4-12)/(GeV/c)/sup 2/. The new data show a number of distinctive features which presently popular models of diffraction cannot explain. The authors show that a model of pp elastic scattering suggested earlier to explain the scattering data at the lower energies (1969) provides a satisfactory agreement with the features of the new data qualitatively as well as quantitatively. In the model besides diffraction a hard-scattering process originating from the existence of a nucleon core is envisaged. The hard process is regarded as responsible for the large momentum transfer scattering and the Orear exponential fall-off of d sigma /dt. (19 refs).