Eur. Phys. J. C (2009) 61: 369-390
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-009-0994-2

Regular Article - Theoretical Physics

Central exclusive production of dijets at hadronic colliders

¹ IFPA, Département AGO, Université de Liège, Sart Tilman, 4000, Liège, Belgium
² Physics Department, McGill University, 3600 University St., Montréal, Québec, H3A2T8, Canada
³ Sobolev Institute of Mathematics, Koptyug avenue 4, 630090, Novosibirsk, Russia

^* e-mail: jr.cudell@ulg.ac.be

Received: 14 July 2008
Revised: 20 January 2009
Published online: 8 April 2009

Abstract

In view of the recent diffractive dijet data from CDF run II, we critically re-evaluate the standard approach to the calculation of central production of dijets in quasi-elastic hadronic collisions. We find that the process is dominated by the non-perturbative region, and that even perturbative ingredients, such as the Sudakov form factor, are not under theoretical control. Comparison with data allows us to fix some of the uncertainties. Although we focus on dijets, our arguments apply to other high-mass central systems, such as the Higgs boson.