Soft Gluon kt-Resummation and the Froissart bound

Abstract

We study soft gluon kt-resummation and the relevance of zero momentum gluons for the energy dependence of total hadronic cross-sections. We discuss a model in which consistency of the energy dependence of the cross-section with the limitation of the Froissart bound, is directly related to the behaviour of the strong coupling constant in the infrared region. Our predictions for the asymptotic behaviour are shown to be related to the ansatz that the infrared behaviour of the QCD strong coupling constant follows an inverse power law.

To be published in Physics Letters B. This version is 25% shorter than the previous one, as requested by the restrictions on the number of pages for this Journal. Some equations have been skipped, some text has been summarized. The earliest version may be useful for a better understanding of some of the material