Prospects for γγ → Higgs observation in ultraperipheral ion collisions at the Future Circular Collider

We study the two-photon production of the Higgs boson, γ γ → H, at the Future Circular Collider (FCC) in ultraperipheral PbPb and pPb collisions at √ sNN = 39 and 63 TeV. Signal and background events are generated with MADGRAPH 5, including γ fluxes from the proton and lead ions in the equivalent photon approximation, yielding σ(γ γ → H) = 1.75 nb and 1.5 pb in PbPb and pPb collisions respectively. We analyse the H→ bb̄ decay mode including realistic reconstruction efficiencies for the final-state b-jets, showered and hadronized with PYTHIA 8, as well as appropriate selection criteria to reduce the γ γ → bb̄, cc̄ continuum backgrounds. Observation of PbPb γγ −→(Pb)H(Pb) is achievable in the first year with the expected FCC integrated luminosities.