Prompt photon production in double-Pomeron-exchange events at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper investigates prompt photon production in double-Pomeron-exchange events at the LHC using the resolved Pomeron model, emphasizing the importance of NLO corrections for constraining Pomeron parton distributions.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed NLO predictions for prompt photon production in double-Pomeron-exchange events at the LHC within the resolved Pomeron framework.

Findings

NLO corrections significantly affect photon production predictions.

Forward proton detector acceptances influence the kinematic constraints.

Results help constrain the quark and gluon content of the Pomeron.

Abstract

Within the resolved Pomeron model of hard diffractive scattering, we compute prompt photon production in double-Pomeron-exchange events in proton-proton collisions. Using specific kinematical constraints chosen according to the acceptances of the forward proton detectors of experiments at the Large Hadron Collider, we provide estimates for inclusive and isolated photon production. This is done using the JetPhox program. We find that next-to-leading order corrections to the hard process are important and must be included in order to correctly constrain the quark and gluon content of the Pomeron from such processes at the LHC.