Impact picture and internal matter motion for elastic scattering

Since four-dimensional relativistic quantum field theories have all the desirable properties such as particle production, unitarity, and analyticity, they provide a useful way to gain theoretical knowledge not only for weak and electromagnetic processes but also for strong interactions. For the dynamics of strong interactions, because of the necessity of understanding all orders of perturbation theory, the simplest case is the high energy limit. After a brief review of the general features of elastic scattering in field theories, the need of developing a phenomenology in order to make contact with present and future experimental data is discussed. Such a phenomenology must satisfy the dual requirement of, on the one hand, giving an accurate description of hadronic experimental data at high energies and, on the other hand, having the s → infinity behavior obtained from field theories. Recent improvements on such a phenomenology are emphasized, and include better parametrization and proper Regge background and spin effects. In particular, the spin of the proton is taken into account by using the concept of hadronic matter current of Chou and Yang. In addition to the total and differential cross sections for ISABELLE energies, predictions are obtained for both polarization and R parameters for proton--proton elastic scattering. Sore theoretical problems for the future are outlined