Diffractive gauge boson production at the LHC as a probe of the flavour content of the Pomeron

The production of the $W$ and $Z$ bosons in single diffractive processes at the LHC is investigated taking into account the ATLAS, CMS and LHCb acceptances and considering different assumptions for the flavour content of the Pomeron. The total cross sections and pseudorapidity distributions are estimated for $pp$ collisions at $\sqrt{s} = 13$ TeV. Our results indicate that a future experimental analysis of the ratio between the $W$ and $Z$ cross sections can be used to probe the flavour content of the Pomeron.