Forward elastic scattering: Dynamical gluon mass and semihard interactions

The role of low-$x$ parton dynamics in dictating the high-energy behavior of forward scattering observables at LHC energies is investigated using a QCD-based model with even-under-crossing amplitude dominance at high-energies. We explore the effects of different sets of pre- and post-LHC fine-tuned parton distributions on the forward quantities $\sigma_{tot}$ and $\rho$, from $pp$ and $\bar{p}p$ scattering in the interval 10 GeV - 13 TeV. We also investigate the role of the leading soft contribution, the low-energy cuttoff, and the energy dependence of the semihard form factor on these observables. We show that in all cases investigated the highly restrictive data on $\rho$ parameter at $\sqrt{s}=13$ TeV indicate that a crossing-odd component may play a crucial role in forward elastic scattering at the highest energies. In the Regge language an odd-under-crossing object is called Odderon.