WW Fusion in Higgsless Models

Abstract

Recently several Higgsless models of electroweak symmetry breaking have been proposed in which unitarity of $W,Z$ scattering amplitudes is partially restored through a tower of massive vector gauge bosons. These massive states are expected to couple mainly to $W$ and $Z$ and should appear as resonances in $WW$ and $WZ$ fusion at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC). We study the LHC discovery reach for the first neutral state, $V_1^0$, through the reaction $W^+W^- \to V_1^0 \to W^+W^- \to e^\pm \mu^\mp + \eslt$. The background from $t\bar{t}$, $\tau^+\tau^-$ and $W$ pair production is calculated and dual forward jet tagging as well as a mini-jet veto in the central detector region are applied. The maximal $P_T(e,\mu)$ distribution is found to have a fat tail for large $P_T$ that rises above the backgrounds and allows $5\sigma$ discovery for $V_1^0$ masses above 1 TeV and total integrated luminosity of 300 fb$^{-1}$.