  We explore an alternative process for the diffractive Higgs boson production
in peripheral pp collisions arising from Double Pomeron Exchange in
photon-proton interaction. We introduce the impact factor formalism in order to
enable the gluon ladder exchange in the photon-proton subprocess, and to permit
the central Higgs production. The event rate for the diffractive Higgs
production in central rapidity is estimated to be about 0.6 pb at Tevatron and
LHC energies. This result is higher than predictions from other approaches for
diffractive Higgs production, showing that the alternative production process
leads to an enhanced signal for the detection of the Higgs boson at hadron
colliders. Our results are compared to those obtained from a similar approach
proposed by the Durham group. In this way we may examine the future
developments in its application to pp and AA collisions.
