Particle Production in a Hadron Collider Rapidity Gap: the Higgs Case

Production of rare particles within rapidity gaps has been proposed as a background-free signal for the detection of new physics at hadron colliders. No complete formalism accounts for such processes yet. We study a simple lowestorder QCD model for their description. Concentrating on Higgs production, we show that the calculation of the cross section pp → ppH can be embedded into existing models which successfully account for diffractive data. We extend those models to take into account single and double diffractive cross sections pp → HX1X2 with a gap between the fragments X1 and X2. Using conservative scenarios, we evaluate the uncertainties in our calculation, and study the dependence of the cross section on the gap width. We predict that Higgs production within a gap of 4 units of rapidity is about 0.3 pb for a 100 GeV Higgs at the Tevatron, and almost 2 pb for a 400 GeV Higgs within a gap of 6 units at the LHC with √ s=14 TeV. permanent address from Dec. 1995: Université de Liège, Physics Dept, Bât. B-5, Sart Tilman, B-4000 Liège, Belgium Supported in part by USDOE contract DE-FG02-91ER 40688-Task A.