Evaluation of the elastic pp single-flip helicity amplitude at low momentum transfer and high energies

We report on the evaluation of the single-flip helicity amplitude by analyzing proton-proton elastic polarization data in the four-momentum-transfer- t region from 1.5×10-3 to 0.6 (GeV/c)2. Recent results around 200 GeV/c in the low -t- range, where the interference of the electromagnetic and hadronic amplitudes is significant, allow a more reliable evaluation of the single-flip hadronic helicity amplitude 5h. Within the experimental errors, our analysis indicates a small and negative real part (-1 to -4 %) and a positive imaginary part (8 to 30 %) for the reduced hadronic single-flip helicity amplitude (m/ -t) 5h with respect to the helicity-averaged hadronic nonflip amplitude. To study the stability of these results, we have also considered data at 45 300 GeV/c in the 0.0570.6 (GeV/c)2 momentum transfer range in conjunction with the aforementioned data.