Exclusive doubly charged Higgs boson pair production in $pp$ collisions at the LHC

TL;DR

This paper explores the potential of exclusive processes at the LHC to detect doubly charged Higgs bosons predicted by the type II seesaw model, emphasizing the unique final state signatures and background considerations.

Contribution

It introduces the first analysis of exclusive production of doubly charged Higgs pairs at the LHC, utilizing forward proton detectors and rapidity gap signatures.

Findings

Exclusive production cross section estimated.

Background analysis with pile-up considered.

Potential to set lower mass bounds on $H^{\pm\pm}$.

Abstract

The type II seesaw model predicts the existence of a doubly charged Higgs boson ($H ^{\pm\pm}$), which can be produced through the Drell - Yan process and photon -- induced interactions at hadronic colliders. In recent years, such reactions have been largely investigated in inclusive processes, where both incident protons breakup and a large number of particles is produced in addition to the doubly charged Higgs pair. In this paper, we investigate, for the first time, the possibility of searching for $H ^{\pm\pm}$ in exclusive processes, which are characterized by two rapidity gaps and two intact very forward protons in final state. We estimate the associated cross section making use of the exclusive nature of the final state, together with the use of timing information provided by forward proton detectors. Moreover, the background is estimated considering distinct amounts of pile-up. Our results indicate that the exclusive doubly charged Higgs pair production is a promising way to search for signatures of the type II seesaw and to obtain lower mass bounds on $H ^{\pm\pm}$.