Study of Higgs boson production and its b-bbar decay in gamma-gamma processes in proton-nucleus collisions at the LHC

We explore for the first time the possibilities to measure an intermediate-mass (mH = 115-140 GeV/c^2) Standard-Model Higgs boson in electromagnetic proton-lead (pPb) interactions at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) via its b-bbar decay. Using equivalent Weizsaecker-Williams photon fluxes and Higgs effective field theory for the coupling gamma-gamma --> H, we obtain a leading-order cross section of the order of 0.3 pb for exclusive Higgs production in elastic (pPb --> gamma-gamma --> p H Pb) and semielastic (pPb --> gamma-gamma --> Pb H X) processes at sqrt(s) = 8.8 TeV. After applying various kinematics cuts to remove the main backgrounds (gamma-gamma --> b-bbar and misidentified gamma-gamma-->q-qbar events), we find that a Higgs boson with mH = 120 GeV/c^2 could be observed in the b-bbar channel with a 3sigma-significance integrating 300 pb^-1 with an upgraded pA luminosity of 10^31 cm^-2s^-1. We also provide for the first time semielastic Higgs cross sections, along with elastic t-tbar cross sections, for electromagnetic pp, pA and AA collisions at the LHC.