2023/06/26 by Gerald A. Miller, Miller, Gerald A. · 3 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph) #High-Energy Particle Collisions Research #Nuclear Experiment (nucl-ex) #Nuclear Theory (nucl-th) #Particle physics theoretical and experimental studies #Quantum Physics (quant-ph) #Statistical Mechanics and Entropy
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2306.14800
openalex publication_date 2023/06/26 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The entanglement properties of systems in which elastic and inelastic reactions occur in projectile-target interactions is studied. A new measure of entanglement, the scattering entropy, based on the unitarity of the S-matrix (probability conservation), is suggested. Using simple models for both low- and high-energy interactions, the amount of entanglement is found to track with the strength of the inelastic interaction. The familiar example of the classical ``black disk", total absorption, model is found to correspond to maximum entanglement. An analysis of high-energy pp scattering data shows that entanglement is near maximum for lab energies greater than about 1 GeV, showing that the total absorption model is a reasonable starting point for understanding the data.