Central exclusive production in QCD

We investigate the theoretical description of the central exclusive production process, h 1 + h 2 → h 1 + X + h 2. Taking Higgs production as an example, we sum logarithmically enhanced corrections appearing in the perturbation series to all orders in the strong coupling. Our results agree with those originally presented by Khoze, Martin and Ryskin except that the scale appearing in the Sudakov factor, μ = 0.62√ŝ, should be replaced with μ = √ŝ, where √ŝ, is the invariant mass of the centrally produced system. We confirm this result using a fixed-order calculation and show that the replacement leads to approximately a factor 2 suppression in the cross-section for central system masses in the range 100-500 GeV. © SISSA 2010.