Fresh look at experimental evidence for odderon exchange

Theory suggests that in high-energy elastic hadron+hadron scattering, t-channel exchange of a family of colourless crossing-odd states – the odderon – may generate differences between and pp cross-sections in the neighbourhood of the diffractive minimum. Using a mathematical approach based on interpolation via continued fractions enhanced by statistical sampling, we develop robust comparisons between elastic differential cross-sections measured at TeV by the D0 Collaboration at the Tevatron and function-form-unbiased extrapolations to this energy of kindred pp measurements at by the TOTEM Collaboration at the LHC and a combination of these data with earlier cross-section measurements at made at the intersecting storage rings. Focusing on a domain that straddles the diffractive minimum in the and pp cross-sections, we find that these two cross-sections differ at the level; hence, supply evidence with this level of significance for the existence of the odderon. If combined with evidence obtained through different experiment-theory comparisons, whose significance is reported to lie in the range , one arrives at a signal for the odderon.