Diffractive exclusive production of heavy quark pairs at high energy proton-proton collisions

TL;DR

This paper analyzes the exclusive production of heavy quark pairs in high-energy proton-proton collisions, providing differential distributions and evaluating the background for Higgs searches.

Contribution

It presents the first calculation of the irreducible leading-order b-bbar background to Higgs production in this context.

Findings

Differential distributions for charm and bottom quark pairs are provided.

The irreducible background to Higgs production is quantified.

Strategies for improving signal-to-background ratio are discussed.

Abstract

We discuss exclusive double diffractive (EDD) production of heavy quark - heavy antiquark pairs at high energies. Differential distributions for $c \bar c$ at $\sqrt{s}$ = 1.96 GeV and for $b \bar b$ at $\sqrt{s}$ = 14 TeV are shown and discussed. Irreducible leading-order $b \bar b $ background to Higgs production is calculated for the first time in several kinematical variables. The signal-to-background ratio is shown and several improvements are suggested.