Central Instanton Production

TL;DR

This paper investigates the production of QCD instantons in central regions of hadron collider events with large rapidity gaps, using kT-factorization to compute differential cross-sections for various processes at the LHC.

Contribution

It provides the first detailed calculations of differential cross-sections for central instanton production, highlighting the dominant role of Pomeron exchange processes.

Findings

Largest contribution from Pomeron exchange processes.

First computation of differential cross-sections for instanton production at LHC.

Use of kT-factorization reduces scale dependence.

Abstract

We study the central production of QCD instantons at hadron colliders in events with two large rapidity gaps. These gaps in rapidity are formed by either Pomeron or photon exchanges or a combination of the two. The kT-factorization formalism is used to reduce the factorization scale dependence. We compute for the first time the relevant differential cross-sections for a complete set of central instanton production processes at the LHC, including gluon-induced and quark-induced amplitudes, and also show that the largest contribution comes from processes with Pomeron exchanges where a single gluon from each Pomeron couples to the instanton.