EXCLUSIVE PRODUCTION OF QUARKONIA IN pp and pp COLLISIONS FAR FROM THE THRESHOLD

The search for Higgs boson is the primary task for the LHC collider being now constructed at CERN. Although the predicted cross section is not small it may not be easy to discover Higgs in inclusive reaction due to large background in each of the final channel considered. An alternative way is to search for Higgs in exclusive or semi-exclusive reactions with large rapidity gaps. Kaidalov, Khoze, Martin and Ryskin proposed to calculate diffractive double elastic (both protons survive the collision) production of Higgs boson in terms of UGDFs [1]. Here I shall present some application of this formalism to the production of η and χc(0 ) mesons. More details can be found in Refs. [2, 3]. At present, there is ongoing investigations at Tevatron aiming at measuring the exclusive production of both vector and scalar quarkonia, but no result is yet publicly available. Recently the J/ψ exclusive production in proton-proton and protonantiproton collisions was suggested as a candidate in searches for odderon exchange [4]. In order to identify the odderon exchange one has to consider all other possible processes leading to the same final channel. One of such processes, probably dominant, is pomeron-photon or photon-pomeron fusion [5].