Search for central exclusive production of top quark pairs in proton-proton collisions at s = 13 TeV with tagged protons

• Published in: The journal of high energy physics 2024-06, Vol.2024 (6), p.187
• Main Authors: Van Doninck, W., Samalan, A., Vermassen, B., Benecke, A., Barroso Ferreira Filho, M., Shopova, M., Sharma, R., Nicolaou, C., Ott, J., Lohezic, V., Meyer, A., Novak, A., Asmuss, P., Bin Anuar, A. A., Kogler, R., Scheurer, V., De Leo, K., Rieger, O., Trevisani, N., Ulrich, R., Weber, M., Horvath, D., Bhowmik, D., Komaragiri, J. R., Majumder, G., Nayak, A., Abbiendi, G., Castro, A., Latino, G., Viliani, L., Govoni, P., Tosi, M., Montagna, P., Belforte, S., Moon, C. S., Han, S., Yoon, I., Merlin, J. A., Choi, M., Adzic, P., Martinez Rivero, C., Florent, A., Hegeman, J., Kieseler, J., Marini, A. C., Stahl Leiton, A. G., Tropea, P., Kaestli, H. C., Srimanobhas, N., Kiminsu, U., Kaya, M., Flacher, H., Seez, C., Kanuganti, A. R., Akpinar, A., Gastler, D., Salyer, K., Brainerd, C., Ignatenko, M., Stone, B., Chang, P., Cooperstein, S., Incandela, J., Schonbeck, N., Gadkari, D., Freeman, Kwok, K. H. M., Wu, Z., Le Mahieu, C., Nickel, M., Roy, D., Seidel, M., Cali, I. A., Kapsiak, C., Bryson, M., Finco, L., Tabb, W., Williams, A., Han, Y., Li, J., Odell, N., Hurtado Anampa, K., Moore, C., Nelson, H., Kwan, S., Jung, A. W., Geurts, F. J. M., Zuo, X., Galanti, M., Holmes, T., Tsoi, H. F., Dermenev, A., Gavrilov, V., Golovtcov, V., Karjavine, V., Skovpen, Y., Berardi, V., Georgiev, V., Kaynak, B., Scribano, A.
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Classical and Quantum Gravitation; Collaboration; Collisions; Confidence intervals; Elementary Particles; Large Hadron Collider; Luminosity; Physics; Physics and Astronomy; Protons; Quantum Field Theories; Quantum Field Theory; Quantum Physics; Quarks; Regular Article - Experimental Physics; Relativity Theory; Sensors; Solenoids; String Theory; Upper bounds
• ISSN: 1029-8479
• DOI: 10.1007/JHEP06(2024)187

A bstract A search for the central exclusive production of top quark-antiquark pairs ( t t ¯ ) is performed for the first time using proton-tagged events in proton-proton collisions at the LHC at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. The data correspond to an integrated luminosity of 29.4 fb − 1 . The t t ¯ decay products are reconstructed using the central CMS detector, while forward protons are measured in the CMS-TOTEM precision proton spectrometer. An observed (expected) upper bound on the production cross section of 0.59 (1.14) pb is set at 95% confidence level, for collisions of protons with fractional momentum losses between 2 and 20%.