Production Of Higgs Particles In Diffractive Hadron Hadron-Collisions

Diffractive Higgs production in proton-proton collisions due to the pomeron-pomeron interaction is analysed. The inclusive production cross section can be calculated with some reliability and turns out to be of the order of 0.2 pb for 10 TeV proton on proton (20 TeV CM energy) and m H =100 GeV and 0.7 pb for 40 TeV CM energy. This is large enough to be observable at the proposed colliders LHC and SSC. We also discuss briefly heavy-ion collisions at LHC or SSC energies, which have been proposed as a way to search for Higgs particles in the mass range of 50–200 GeV produced in diffractive electromagnetic processes. We estimate the pomeron contribution to be comparable to the electromagnetic one, but we give some arguments why we think such heavy ion experiments to be difficult.