Central exclusive diffractive Higgs boson production in hadron-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus collisions at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper investigates the production of Higgs bosons through central exclusive diffractive processes in hadron-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus collisions at the LHC, highlighting photon-photon fusion as the dominant mechanism.

Contribution

It demonstrates that photon-photon fusion is the primary source for central exclusive diffractive Higgs production in these collisions at the LHC, providing cross section estimates.

Findings

Photon-photon fusion dominates Higgs production in these collisions.

Cross sections are approximately 0.6 pb (proton-gold) and 3.9 nb (gold-gold).

Gluon-gluon fusion yields smaller cross sections.

Abstract

In this paper, it is shown that in hadron-nucleus and nucleus-nucleus collisions, the main source for central exclusive diffractive Higgs production is photon-photon fusion. At the LHC energy, the total cross section for this process is about 0.6 pb (for proton-gold scattering), and 3.9 nb (for gold-gold collision) while the gluon-gluon fusion leads to the value of the cross section for CED Higgs production which is about 0.1 nb and 3.9 pb respectively.