Diffractive Higgs production from intrinsic heavy flavors in the proton

We propose a novel mechanism for exclusive diffractive Higgs production $pp\to p H p $ in which the Higgs boson carries a significant fraction of theprojectile proton momentum. This mechanism will provide a clear experimentalsignal for Higgs production due to the small background in this kinematicregion. The key assumption underlying our analysis is the presence of intrinsicheavy flavor components of the proton bound state, whose existence at highlight-cone momentum fraction $x$ has growing experimental and theoreticalsupport. We also discuss the implications of this picture for exclusivediffractive quarkonium and other channels.Comment: 30 pages, 5 figure