Diffractive $\gamma \gamma$ production in $pp$ collisions at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper estimates the contribution of double diffractive processes to diphoton production at the LHC, providing predictions for distributions and comparing with other processes to help constrain diffractive parton distributions.

Contribution

It offers the first detailed estimation of double diffractive contributions to diphoton production at the LHC, including detector acceptance and distribution predictions.

Findings

Double diffractive processes contribute significantly to diphoton production.

Predicted distributions for invariant mass, rapidity, and transverse momentum are provided.

Double diffractive events can be distinguished and used to study diffractive parton distributions.

Abstract

In this letter we estimate the contribution of the double diffractive processes for the diphoton production in $pp$ collisions at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The acceptance of the central and forward LHC detectors is taken into account and predictions for the invariant mass, rapidity and, transverse momentum distributions are presented. A comparison with the predictions for the Light -- by -- Light (LbL) scattering and exclusive diphoton production is performed. We demonstrate that the events associated to double diffractive processes can be separated and its study can be used to constrain the behavior of the diffractive parton distribution functions.