Associated W and Higgs boson photoproduction and other electroweak photon induced processes at the LHC

Abstract

Experimental prospects for studying at the LHC photon-proton interactions at center of mass energies up to and above 1 TeV are discussed. Cross sections are presented for many electroweak and beyond the Standard Model processes. Selection strategies based on photon interaction tagging techniques are discussed. Assuming a typical LHC multipurpose detector, the production of single top associated to a W, and anomalous top signals and their irreducible backgrounds are presented after applying detector acceptance cuts. The associated photoproduction of Higgs and W bosons has a typical cross section of 20 fb. The possibility of observing this reaction is investigated for topologies with signal-to-noise ratio close to unity.

Comments: 8 pages, 8 tables, 6 figures. Summary talk given at the Workshop on "High-energy photon collisions at the LHC", April 22-25, 2008, CERN, Switzerland. To appear in the proceedings