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

TL;DR

This paper investigates the exclusive production of Higgs bosons and heavy quark pairs in high-energy proton-proton collisions, analyzing differential distributions and background suppression techniques to improve detection prospects.

Contribution

It presents a detailed analysis of diffractive exclusive production mechanisms for Higgs and heavy quarks, including background calculations and strategies for enhancing signal detection.

Findings

Differential distributions for charm and bottom quark pairs are provided.

The irreducible background for Higgs production via bottom quark pairs is quantified.

Imposing cuts on transverse momenta and rapidities can improve the signal-to-background ratio.

Abstract

We discuss exclusive double diffractive (EDD) production of Higgs boson and 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 in several kinematical variables. The signal-to-background ratio is shown and several improvements are suggested by imposing cuts on $b$ ($\bar b$) transverse momenta and rapidities.