Diffractive W production at hadron colliders as a test of colour singlet exchange mechanisms

Abstract

We revisit diffractive and exclusive W production at hadron colliders in different models for soft colour exchanges. The process pp to p[WX]p, and in particular a W charge asymmetry, has been suggested as a way to discriminate diffractive processes as being due to pomeron exchange in Regge phenomenology or QCD-based colour reconnection models. Our detailed analysis of the latter models at LHC energies shows, however, that they give similar results as pomeron models for very leading protons and central W production, including a vanishing W charge asymmetry. We demonstrate that soft colour exchange models provide a continuous transition from diffractive to inelastic processes and thereby include the intrinsic asymmetry of inelastic interactions while being at the same time sensitive to the underlying hadronisation models. Such sensitivity also concerns the differential distributions in proton momentum and W transverse momentum which opens possibilities to discriminate between different colour reconnection models.

17 pages, 8 figures

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Cited by in corpus (6)

• Probing the Pomeron structure using dijets and $\gamma$+jet events at the LHC
• Diffractive photon production at the LHC
• Testing Pomeron flavour symmetry with diffractive W charge asymmetry
• Probing the diffractive production of Z boson pair at forward rapidities at the LHC
• Dynamic colour screening in diffractive deep inelastic scattering
• Diffractive gauge boson production at the LHC as a probe of the flavour content of the Pomeron