The Production of $Z'$ Associated With Photons or Jets as a Probe of New Gauge Boson Couplings

Abstract

We examine the production of a new $Z'$ gauge boson in association with photons or jets at future hadron supercolliders as a probe of its couplings to fermions. Associated jet production is found to be rather insensitive to these couplings and suffers from large uncertainties as well as substantial backgrounds. On the other hand, the ratio of rates for associated photon $Z'$ production to that of conventional $Z'$ production has a rather clean signature (once appropriate cuts are made), and is found to be quite sensitive to the choice of extended electroweak model, while being simultaneously insensitive to structure function uncertainties and QCD corrections. Rates at both the SSC and LHC are significant for $Z'$ masses in the 1 TeV range.