Observation of exclusive dijet production at the Fermilab Tevatron (p)over-bar-p collider

We present the first observation and cross section measurement of exclusive dijet production in (p) over barp interactions, (p) over barp -> (p) over bar + dijet + p. Using a data sample of 310 pb(-1) collected by the Run II Collider Detector at Fermilab at root s = 1.96 TeV, exclusive cross sections for events with two jets of transverse energy E-T(jet) >= 10 GeV have been measured as a function of minimum E-T(jet). The exclusive signal is extracted from fits to data distributions based on Monte Carlo simulations of expected dijet signal and background shapes. The simulated background distribution shapes are checked in a study of a largely independent data sample of 200 pb(-1) of b-tagged jet events, where exclusive dijet production is expected to be suppressed by the J(z) = 0 total angular momentum selection rule. Results obtained are compared with theoretical expectations, and implications for exclusive Higgs boson production at the pp Large Hadron Collider at root s = 14 TeV are discussed.