Diffractive Higgs boson photoproduction in γp process

Abstract

We explore an alternative process for diffractive Higgs boson production in peripheral pp collisions arising from double Pomeron exchange in photon-proton interaction. We introduce the impact factor formalism in order to enable the gluon ladder exchange in the photon-proton subprocess, and to permit central Higgs production. The event rate for diffractive Higgs production in central rapidity is estimated to be about 0.6 pb at Tevatron and LHC energies. This result is higher than predictions from other approaches of diffractive Higgs production, showing that the alternative production process leads to an enhanced signal for the detection of the Higgs boson at hadron colliders. Our results are compared with those obtained from a similar approach proposed by the Durham Group. In this way, we may examine future developments in its application to pp and AA collisions.