Unified picture of proton--proton elastic scattering at all angles from 3 to 24 GeV/c

We have investigated pp elastic scattering on the basis of smooth distributions for the helicity-nonflip and -flip amplitudes in the impact parameter b. We show how these distributions change with energy. We give interpretations for the shrinkage of the forward diffraction peak, the break in dσ/dt at |t|≈1 (GeV/c)², and the observed pronounced structure in the pp polarization.