Radiative QCD backgrounds to exclusive $H\to b\bar{b}$ production: radiation from the screening gluon

Central exclusive Higgs boson production, pp→p ⊕ H ⊕ p, at the LHC can provide an important complementary contribution to the comprehensive study of the Higgs sector in a remarkably clean topology. The \(b\bar{b}\) Higgs decay mode is especially attractive, and for certain BSM scenarios may even become the discovery channel. Obvious requirements for the success of such exclusive measurements are strongly suppressed and controllable backgrounds. One potential source of background comes from additional gluon radiation which leads to a three-jet \(b\bar{b}g\) final state. We perform an explicit calculation of the subprocesses \(gg\to q\bar{q}g\), gg→ggg in the case of ‘internal’ gluon radiation from the spectator, t-channel screening gluon, when the two incoming active t-channel gluons form a color octet. We find that the overall contribution of this source of background is orders of magnitude lower than that caused by the main irreducible background resulting from the \(gg^{\mathrm{PP}}\to b\bar{b}\) subprocess. Therefore, this background contribution can be safely neglected.