Selecting the diffractive events at the LHC energies

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that a simple charged hadron absence criterion in the central pseudorapidity region effectively isolates diffractive events at LHC energies using PYTHIA 8 simulations, facilitating diffraction studies without specialized detectors.

Contribution

It introduces a straightforward method to select diffractive events at the LHC based on charged hadron absence, bypassing the need for dedicated detectors.

Findings

The charged hadron absence criterion removes almost all non-diffractive events.

The method enables diffraction studies with existing detector capabilities.

Simulation results support the effectiveness of the selection criterion.

Abstract

The PYTHIA 8 generator is used to estimate the percentage of non-diffractive and diffractive events at the LHC energies. It is shown that a simple condition of the absence of charged hadrons in the central pseudorapidity region is sufficient to remove almost all non-diffractive events. This opens the way to investigate diffraction without waiting for the future specialized detectors.