Generation of central exclusive final states

Abstract

We present a scheme for the generation of central exclusive final states in the Pythia 8 program. The implementation allows for the investigation of higher order corrections to such exclusive processes as approximated by the initial-state parton shower in Pythia 8. To achieve this, the spin and colour decomposition of the initial-state shower has been worked out, in order to determine the probability that a partonic state generated from an inclusive sub-process followed by a series of initial-state parton splittings can be considered as an approximation of an exclusive colour- and spin-singlet process. We use our implementation to investigate effects of parton showers on some examples of central exclusive processes, and find sizeable effects on di-jet production, while the effects on e.g. central exclusive Higgs production are minor.