We calculate absorptive corrections to single pion exchange in the production of leading neutrons in $pp$ collisions. Contrary to the usual procedure of convolving the survival probability with the cross section, we apply corrections to the spin amplitudes. The nonflip amplitude turns out to be much more suppressed by absorption than the spin-flip one. We identify the projectile proton Fock state responsible for the absorptive corrections as a color octet-octet 5-quarks configuration. Calculations within two very different models, color-dipole light-cone description, and in hadronic representation, lead to rather similar absorptive corrections. We found a much stronger damping of leading neutrons than in some of previous estimates. Correspondingly, the cross section is considerably smaller than was measured at ISR. However, comparison with recent measurements by the ZEUS collaboration of neutron production in deep-inelastic scattering provides a strong motivation for challenging the normalization of the ISR data. This conjecture is also supported by preliminary data from the NA49 experiment for neutron production in $pp$ collisions at SPS.

• Received 3 June 2008

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.78.014031