Precision Electroweak Data: Phenomenological Analysis

Abstract

The precision electroweak program, including weak neutral current (WNC), $Z$-pole, and high energy collider experiments, has been the primary prediction and test of electroweak unification. It has established that the standard model (SM) is correct and unique to first approximation, establishing the gauge principle as well as the SM gauge group and representations; shown that the SM is correct at loop level, confirming the basic principles of renormalizable gauge theory and allowing the successful prediction or constraint on $m_t$, $α_s$, and $M_H$; severely constrained new physics at the TeV scale, with the ideas of unification strongly favored over TeV-scale compositeness; and yielded precise values for the gauge couplings, consistent with (supersymmetric) gauge unification.