Electrostatic correction to high energy hadron scattering

Electromagnetic correction to hadron scattering, mainly due to the Coulomb interaction between charged particles, is investigated by means of the geometrical picture of high energy scattering. The change in phase of the hadron scattering amplitude is calculated from the eikonal and the order of magnitude of the correction to the total cross section is estimated from the deflection of the particle trajectories. Owing to the final state Coulomb interactions, the electromagnetic correction to the total cross section remains constant or slowly increases with energy, and the difference between particle and antiparticle total cross sections decreases with energy roughly as 1/In s. (author)