The critical regime of elastic scattering of protons at the LHC

It is shown that the darkness of the interaction region of protons is governed by the ratio of the slope of the diffraction cone to the total cross section. At LHC energies, it becomes completely absorptive at small impact parameters. The lower limit of the ratio is determined. That imposes some restrictions on its energy behavior. It is argued that the black disk terminology should be replaced by the black torus.