Forward proton tagging as a way to identify a light Higgs boson at the LHC

Abstract

We show that exclusive double-diffractive Higgs production, pp -> p+H+p, followed by the H -> bbbar decay, could play an important role in identifying a `light' Higgs boson at the LHC, provided that the forward outgoing protons are tagged. We predict the cross sections for the signal and for all possible bbbar backgrounds.

7 pages, 1 figure, Presented at the 10th International Workshop on Deep Inelastic Scattering, DIS(2002), Krakow, Poland, 30 April--4 May 2002