Observing Strongly Interacting Vector Boson Systems at the CERN Large Hadron Collider

Abstract

We explore the potential of the CERN Large Hadron Collider to access a strongly interacting electroweak symmetry breaking sector via weak boson scattering with WWjj, ZZjj and WZjj final states. As examples of models with scalar or vector resonances we concentrate on a scenario with a heavy Higgs boson and on a Warped Higgsless Kaluza-Klein model of narrow spin-one resonances. The signal and the most prominent background processes are evaluated using exact tree-level matrix elements including full off-shell and finite width effects for final states with two tagging jets and four leptons. Using double forward jet-tagging techniques, we derive dedicated cuts on the observable jets and charged leptons to suppress Standard Model backgrounds. We demonstrate that the LHC has substantial sensitivity to strong interactions in the electroweak symmetry breaking sector.