Study of Diffraction with the ATLAS detector at the LHC

The thesis is devoted to the study of diffractive physics with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. After a short introduction to diffractive physics including soft and hard diffraction, we discuss diffractive exclusive production at the LHC whichis particularly interesting for Higgs and jet production. The QCD mechanism described by the Khoze Martin Ryskin and the CHIDe models are elucidated in detail. The uncertainties on these models are still large and a new possible exclusive jetmeasurement at the LHC will allow to reduce the uncertainty on diffarctive Higgs boson production to a factor 2 to 3. An additional measurement of exclusive pion production pp ! p_+_−p allows to constrain further exclusive model relying on theuse of the ALFA stations, which are used in the ATLAS Experiment for detection of protons scattered in elastic and diffractive interactions. In the last part of the thesis, the AFP detectors, aiming at measuring the protons scattered in diffractive interactions, are presented. They allow to extend substantially the ATLAS physics programme. In particular, the study of the central diffractive W boson production process makes possible a better determination of the nature of diffractive exchanges.