Theorists from the IPPP led by Professor Valery Khoze have been working closely with experimentalists from ATLAS and CMS to develop a proposal to install very forward proton detectors at the LHC. These detectors would measure precisely forward protons in conjunction with the corresponding central detectors as a means to study Standard Model physics, and to search for and to identify New Physics signals.
The forward proton tagging experiments can enhance the ability of the ATLAS and CMS detectors to measure the mass and quantum numbers of the Higgs boson, should it be discovered via traditional searches, and may augment the discovery reach if nature favours certain plausible beyond the Standard Model scenarios, such as its minimal supersymmetric extension (MSSM).
Professor Khoze, together with Professors Alan Martin, James Stirling and Georg Weiglein and IPPP Visiting Professor Misha Ryskin have developed the theoretical basis for the Central Exclusive Production process pp → p+ φ+ p, in which the outgoing protons remain intact and the central system φ may be a single object such as the long awaited Higgs boson. The theoretical calculations have been validated through the observation of exclusive di-jet and di-photon events at the TEVATRON as well as various other tests of the underlying theory at the TEVATRON and HERA.
Simulations by the Manchester group show that the Higgs boson could be identified as a clear resonance directly from the momenta of the tagged protons.
The full 175 page FP420 technical design report is available at http://arxiv.org/abs/0806.0302
