Popping out the Higgs boson off vacuum at Tevatron and LHC

Abstract

In the prospect of diffractive Higgs production at the LHC collider, we give an extensive study of Higgs boson, dijet, diphoton and dilepton production at hadronic colliders via diffraction at both hadron vertices. Our model, based on non factorizable Pomeron exchange, describes well the observed dijet rate observed at Tevatron Run I. Taking the absolute normalization from data, our predictions are given for diffractive processes at Tevatron and LHC. Stringent tests of our model and of its parameters using data being taken now at Tevatron Run II are suggested. These measurements will also allow to discriminate between various models and finally to give precise predictions on diffractive Higgs boson production cross-section at the LHC.Comment: 27 pages, 16 figures. Published version, incorporating corrections listed in the Erratum to appea