Diffractive Higgs production from intrinsic heavy flavors in the proton

Abstract

We propose a novel mechanism for exclusive diffractive Higgs production $pp\ensuremath{\rightarrow}pHp$ in which the Higgs boson carries a significant fraction of the projectile proton momentum. This mechanism will provide a clear experimental signal for Higgs production due to the small background in this kinematic region. The key assumption underlying our analysis is the presence of intrinsic heavy flavor components of the proton bound state, whose existence at the high light-cone momentum fraction $x$ has growing experimental and theoretical support. We also discuss the implications of this picture for exclusive diffractive quarkonium and other channels.