Evidence that hadronic interiors have a denser matter than charge distribution

An analysis of high-energy elastic and inelastic diffraction scattering provides strong evidence that the charge and matter densities of hadrons are different. When hadrons are treated as composite objects, then a correct Glauber analysis leads to an optical model with important corrections due to the hadronic wave function: One expects inelastic diffraction due to the fluctuations in the matter density of hadrons. Conversely, the experimental existence of dissociation processes gives phenomenological information about the hadronic wave function. We find the distribution of matter in nucleons to be denser than the observed charge distribution. This result has a natural interpretation from a constituent description of hadrons made from spin 1/2 quarks and colored vector gluons, which is a generalization of the Chou-Yang picture of diffraction scattering. (orig.)