Abstract

We propose to search for a Higgs particle produced diffractively in the fragmentation region of one of the colliding protons. This mechanism will provide a clear experimental signal for Higgs production due to the small background in this kinematic region. The key assumption underlying our analysis is the presence of intrinsic heavy flavor components of the proton bound state, whose existence at high light-cone momentum fraction x has growing experimental and theoretical support. © 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.