Combining searches of Z' and W' bosons

Abstract

We study in a model-independent way new neutral and charged vector bosons that could give observable signals with leptonic final states at the LHC. We show, in particular, that a charged vector W' decaying into lepton plus neutrino is accompanied by at least an extra neutral vector boson Z', nearly degenerate with the charged one. Conversely, a Z' boson with significant isospin violation cannot exist without a companion W'. To take advantage of these generic correlations, we perform a combined analysis of LHC data in the dilepton and lepton-plus-missing-energy channels, which allows us to improve the limits from independent analyses. We also develop some tools to easily deal with cases in which several heavy vector bosons with similar masses interfere. Finally, we develop a theoretically consistent framework for the study of the sequential Z' and W' benchmarks.