Eur. Phys. J. C (2011) 71: 1649
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-011-1649-7

Regular Article - Theoretical Physics

BSM Higgs physics in the exclusive forward proton mode at the LHC

¹ Instituto de Física de Cantabria (CSIC-UC), Santander, Spain
² IPPP, Department of Physics, Durham University, Durham, DH1 3LE, UK
³ School of Physics & Astronomy, University of Manchester, Manchester, M13 9PL, UK
⁴ Petersburg Nuclear Physics Institute, Gatchina, St. Petersburg, 188300, Russia
⁵ Institute of Physics of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, Na Slovance 2, 18221, Prague 8, Czech Republic
⁶ DESY, Notkestraße 85, 22603, Hamburg, Germany

^* e-mail: Marek.Tasevsky@cern.ch

Received: 27 December 2010
Revised: 15 April 2011
Published online: 28 May 2011

Abstract

We investigate the prospects for Central Exclusive Diffractive (CED) production of BSM Higgs bosons at the LHC using forward proton detectors installed at 220 m and 420 m distance around ATLAS and/or CMS. We update a previous analysis for the MSSM taking into account improvements in the theoretical calculations and the most recent exclusion bounds from the Tevatron. We extend the MSSM analysis to new benchmark scenarios that are in agreement with the cold dark matter relic abundance and other precision measurements. We analyze the exclusive production of Higgs bosons in a model with a fourth generation of fermions. Finally, we comment on the determination of Higgs spin–parity and coupling structures at the LHC and show that the forward proton mode could provide crucial information on the properties of the Higgs bosons.