Impact parameter dependence of the Higgs boson production in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions

The production of intermediate-mass Higgs bosons in strong electromagnetic fields prevailing in ultrarelativistic heavy-ion collisions is studied. To exclude the contribution of central collisions to the production cross section the authors develop an impact parameter dependent equivalent photon method starting from the gamma gamma to H vertex for a scalar boson as well as for a pseudoscalar boson. For an assumed scalar Higgs mass of m H =100 GeV they obtain a reduced cross section sigma H =57 Pb for a Pb-Pb collision at LHC energies with gamma =3500 and sigma H =450 Pb at SSC energies with gamma =8000, which are by a factor of 2.1 and 1.5 smaller than the corresponding original Weizsacker (1934)-Williams (1933) cross sections.