Measurement of the absolute differential cross section of proton–proton elastic scattering at small angles

The differential cross section for proton–proton elastic scattering has been measured at a beam kinetic energy of 1.0 GeV and in 200 MeV steps from 1.6 to 2.8 GeV for centre-of-mass angles in the range from 12°–16° to 25°–30°, depending on the energy. A precision in the overall normalisation of typically 3% was achieved by studying the energy losses of the circulating beam of the COSY storage ring as it passed repeatedly through the windowless hydrogen target of the ANKE magnetic spectrometer. It is shown that the data have a significant impact upon the results of a partial wave analysis. After extrapolating the differential cross sections to the forward direction, the results are broadly compatible with the predictions of forward dispersion relations.