Potential of central exclusive production studies in high β* runs at the LHC with CMS-TOTEM

Abstract

At CERNs Large Hadron Collider, a unique possibility to study central exclusive processes such as the production of low mass resonances, charmonium states and jets, as well as to search for missing mass or momentum signatures opens up by the detection of both leading protons with the special β* = 90 m optics. At [Formula: see text] with that optics the leading proton acceptance of the TOTEM Roman Pots covers all diffractive masses, provided that the proton four-momentum transfer |t| ≳ 0.04 GeV 2. This paper describes the physics potential with an integrated luminosity of 10 pb-1 and 100 pb-1 for common CMS and TOTEM data taking at β* = 90 m optics.