Single and Central Diffractive Higgs Production at the LHC

Abstract: The single and central diffractive production of the Standard Model Higgs boson is computed using the diffractive factorization formalism, taking into account a parametrization for the Pomeron structure function provided by the H1 Collaboration. We compute the cross sections at NLO accuracy for the gluon fusion process, since it is the leading mechanism for the Higgs boson production. The gap survival probability is also introduced to include the rescattering corrections due to spectator particles present in the interaction. The diffractive ratios are predicted for proton-proton collisions at the LHC, since the beam luminosity is favorable to the Higgs boson detection. These results provide updated estimations for the fraction of single and central diffractive events in the LHC kinematical regime.