CMS: Diffractive production of W/Z bosons or jets in association with a forward proton using low-pileup data at 13 TeV

This work investigates the diffractive production of W and Z bosons, or high-pT jets, in association with a forward-tagged proton using low-pileup proton-proton collision data at $\sqrt{s}$= 13 TeV, collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC. Diffractive events, characterized by the presence of an intact proton, are studied by analyzing the rapidity distributions of final state leptons or jets. These distributions are sensitive to the kinematic differences between events with and without a tagged proton. By applying statistical analysis to the dataset, we aim to quantify the significance of these differences and provide the first observation of single diffractive W and Z boson production at this energy scale. The study offers crucial insights into the dynamics of diffractive processes and contributes to refining theoretical models, such as pomeron exchange, that describe hard diffraction in quantum chromodynamics (QCD). Preliminary results indicate the presence of diffractive processes, with potential implications for the understanding of proton structure and the modeling of forward physics at the LHC.