Diffractive Higgs Boson Production at the Fermilab Tevatron and the CERN Large Hadron Collider

Improved possibilities to find the Higgs boson in diffractive events, having less hadronic activity, depend on whether the cross section is large enough. Based on the soft color interaction models that successfully describe diffractive hard scattering at DESY HERA and the Fermilab Tevatron, we find that only a few diffractive Higgs events may be produced at the Tevatron, but we predict a substantial rate at the CERN Large Hadron Collider.

Figure 1

Higgs production in $p\overline{p}$ collisions with string topologies (double-dashed lines) before and after soft color interactions in the SCI or GAL model, resulting in events with one or two rapidity gaps (leading particles).

Figure 2

Predictions from the SCI model for Higgs production in single diffractive events defined by a leading proton or rapidity gap criterion at the Tevatron and LHC. Absolute cross sections and relative ratio (single diffractive to all Higgs) versus the Higgs mass.

Figure 3

Multiplicity (for LHC divided by 2.5) in the region $2.4<|\eta |<5.9$ in the hemisphere of a leading proton with the indicated minimum $x_F$, for Higgs events from the SCI and the Pomeron models.

Figure 4

Distribution in $x_F=p_{\parallel }/p_{\mathrm{m}\mathrm{a}\mathrm{x}}$ of leading protons in single diffractive Higgs production in the Pomeron model (pompyt Monte Carlo) applied to Tevatron and LHC energies. Curves are for all such events (dotted line), events with no particles in $2.4<|\eta |<5.9$ (solid line), and with a gap of size at least four units in rapidity (dashed line).