Measurement of exclusive γγ →w+W- production and search for exclusive Higgs boson production in pp collisions at s =8 TeV using the ATLAS detector

Searches for exclusively produced W boson pairs in the process pp(γγ)→pW+W-p and an exclusively produced Higgs boson in the process pp(gg)→pHp have been performed using e±μ final states. These measurements use 20.2 fb-1 of pp collisions collected by the ATLAS experiment at a center-of-mass energy s=8 TeV at the LHC. Exclusive production of W+W- consistent with the Standard Model prediction is found with 3.0σ significance. The exclusive W+W- production cross section is determined to be σ(γγ→W+W-→e±μX)=6.9±2.2(stat)±1.4(sys) fb, in agreement with the Standard Model prediction. Limits on anomalous quartic gauge couplings are set at 95\% confidence level as -1.7×10-6<a0W/Λ2<1.7×10-6 GeV-2 and -6.4×10-6<aCW/Λ2<6.3×10-6 GeV-2. A 95\% confidence-level upper limit on the total production cross section for an exclusive Higgs boson is set to 1.2 pb. © 2016 CERN. © 2016 CERN, for the ATLAS Collaboration. Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the »http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/» Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.