Eur. Phys. J. C (2006) 45: 401-407
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s2005-02447-x

Theoretical Physics

Detecting the standard model Higgs bosonin the WW decay channel using forward proton tagging at the LHC

¹ Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Manchester, M13 9PL, Manchester, UK
² CERN, 1211, Geneva 23, Switzerland
³ Department of Physics and Institute for Particle Physics Phenomenology, University of Durham, DH1 3LE, UK
⁴ UCL-FYNU Département de physique, Université catholique de Louvain, 1348, Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium
⁵ Gatchina, Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute, 188300, St. Petersburg, Russia
⁶ Physics Department, University of Antwerp, 2610, Antwerp, Belgium

Received: 21 July 2005
Revised: 10 October 2005
Published online: 5 December 2005

Abstract

We present a detailed study of the central exclusive production of the standard model Higgs boson in the WW decay channel at the LHC. We include estimates of the experimental acceptance, including that of the proposed proton tagging detectors at 220 m and 420 m around either ATLAS and/or CMS, and the level 1 trigger acceptances. We give first estimates of the photon-photon and glue-glue background processes in the semi-leptonic and fully leptonic decay channels. We find that there will be a detectable signal for Higgs masses between 140 GeV and 200 GeV, and that the backgrounds should be controllable.