Can an invisible Higgs boson be seen via diffraction at the LHC?

Abstract

We study the possibility of observing an `invisible' Higgs boson in central exclusive diffractive production at the LHC. We evaluate the cross section using, as a simple example, the Standard Model with a heavy fourth generation, where the invisible decay mode $H\to {\nu }_4{\bar{\nu }}_4$ dominates, with the heavy neutrino mass $M({\nu }_4)\simeq 50$ GeV. We discuss the possible requirements on trigger conditions and the background processes.

Comments: 8 pages, 1 figure