Abstract: A measurement of the exclusive two-photon production of muon pairs in proton-proton collisions at s?=7 TeV, pp ? p? + ? ?p, is reported using data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 40 pb?1. For muon pairs with invariant mass greater than 11.5 GeV, transverse momentum p T (?) > 4 GeV and pseudorapidity |?(?)| < 2.1, a fit to the dimuon p T (? + ? ?) distribution results in a measured cross section of ?(p ? p? + ? ?p) = 3.38+0.58?0.55 (stat.) ± 0.16 (syst.) ± 0.14 (lumi.) pb, consistent with the theoretical prediction evaluated with the event generator LPAIR. The ratio to the predicted cross section is 0.83+0.58?0.13 (stat.) ± 0.04 (syst.) ± 0.03 (lumi.). The characteristic distributions of the muon pairs produced via ?? fusion, such as the muon acoplanarity, the muon pair invariant mass and transverse momentum agree with those from the theory.

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