A search for the central exclusive production of top quark-antiquark pairs ($ \textrm{t}\overline{\textrm{t}} $) is performed for the first time using proton-tagged events in proton-proton collisions at the LHC at a centre-of-mass energy of 13 TeV. The data correspond to an integrated luminosity of 29.4 fb$^{−1}$. The $ \textrm{t}\overline{\textrm{t}} $ decay products are reconstructed using the central CMS detector, while forward protons are measured in the CMS-TOTEM precision proton spectrometer. An observed (expected) upper bound on the production cross section of 0.59 (1.14) pb is set at 95% confidence level, for collisions of protons with fractional momentum losses between 2 and 20%.[graphic not available: see fulltext]
Benecke, A., Bruno, G., Bury, F., Caputo, C., David, P., Delaere, C., Donertas, I. S., Giammanco, A., Jaffel, K., Jain, S., Jain, S., Lemaitre, V., Mondal, K., Prisciandaro, J., Taliercio, A., Tran, T. T., Vischia, P., Wertz, S., CMS, et al. (2024). Search for central exclusive production of top quark pairs in proton-proton collisions at $ \sqrt{s} $ = 13 TeV with tagged protons. Journal of High Energy Physics, 06. https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP06(2024)187 (Original work published 2024)