Nucleon-nucleon scattering matrix and its Nc scaling

Abstract

This paper focuses on the scaling of the S-matrix for elastic nucleon-nucleon scattering at large Nc. It is argued that the logarithm of a typical S-matrix element is proportional to Nc in the regime where the large Nc limit is taken with momentum of the incident nucleons proportional Nc. The suggested scaling was previously derived within the framework of potential scattering models for purely elastic scattering in which the parameters scale the same way as in large Nc QCD. A variety of heuristic arguments strongly suggest that the same scaling holds in the realistic case where both elastic and inelastic scattering are possible.