https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s2004-01729-1
theoretical physics
Hunting a light CP-violating Higgs boson via diffraction at the LHC
1
Department of Physics and Institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology, University of Durham, DH13LE, UK
2
Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute, 188300, Gatchina, St.Petersburg, Russia
We study the central diffractive production of the (three neutral) Higgs bosons, with a rapidity gap on either side, in an MSSM scenario with CP-violation. We consider the 
and 
decay for the light H
1 boson and the four b-jet final state for the heavy H
2 and H
3 bosons, and discuss the corresponding backgrounds. A direct indication of the existence of CP-violation can come from the observation of either an azimuthal asymmetry in the angular distribution of the tagged forward protons (for the exclusive 
process) or of a 
contribution in the azimuthal correlation between the transverse energy flows in the proton fragmentation regions for the process with the diffractive dissociation of both incoming protons (
). We emphasise the advantage of reactions with the rapidity gaps (that is, production by pomeron-pomeron fusion) to probe CP-parity and to determine the quantum numbers of the produced central object.
© Springer-Verlag, 2004
