The Z boson spin observables as messengers of new physics

• Main Authors: J. A. Aguilar-Saavedra, J. Bernabéu, V. A. Mitsou, A. Segarra
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: SpringerOpen 2017-04-01
• Series: European Physical Journal C: Particles and Fields
• Subjects: Large Hadron Collider; Angular Distribution; Charged Lepton; Light Supersymmetric Particle; Standard Model Prediction
• Online Access: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1140/epjc/s10052-017-4795-8

Abstract We demonstrate that the eight multipole parameters describing the spin state of the Z boson are able to disentangle known Z production mechanisms and signals from new physics at the LHC. They can be extracted from appropriate asymmetries in the angular distribution of lepton pairs from the Z boson decay. The power of this analysis is illustrated by (1) the production of Z boson plus jets; (2) Z boson plus missing transverse energy; (3) W and Z bosons originating from the two-body decay of a heavy resonance.