Diffractive and Exclusive (Higgs?) Production from CDF to LHC

TL;DR

This paper reviews the diffractive physics program at Fermilab's Tevatron, presenting recent results on diffractive structure functions, exclusive production processes, and their implications for Higgs boson searches at the LHC.

Contribution

It provides new measurements of diffractive structure functions, t-distribution slopes, and exclusive production cross sections, and interprets these within the RENORM QCD model.

Findings

Diffractive structure functions depend on x-Bjorken and Q^2.

Exclusive di-jet and di-photon production rates align with theoretical estimates.

Data support the RENORM model's approach to diffraction cross sections.

Abstract

The diffractive program of the CDF Collaboration at the Fermilab Tevatron p-pbar collider is reviewed with emphasis on recent results from Run II at a c.m.s. energy of 1.96 TeV. Results are presented on the x-Bjorken and Q^2 dependence of the diffractive structure function obtained from di-jet production, on the slope parameter of the t-distribution of diffractive events as a function of Q^2 in the range 1 GeV^2<Q^2<10^4 GeV^2, and on cross sections for exclusive di-jet, e+e-, and di-photon production. The exclusive di-jet and di-photon production rates are used to check theoretical estimates of exclusive Higgs boson production at the Large Hadron Collider. Other data on soft and hard diffraction from p-ppbar collisions, and also data from diffractive deep inelastic scattering are presented and interpreted in the RENORM phenomenological model, in which cross sections are obtained from the underlying inclusive parton distribution function of the nucleon and QCD color factors.