All electroweak four fermion processes in electron-positron collisions

Abstract

This paper studies the electroweak production of all possible four fermion states in e+ e- collisions. Since the methods employed to evaluate the complete matrix elements and phase space are very general, all four fermion final states in which the charged particles are detected can be considered. Also all kinds of experimental cuts can be imposed. With the help of the constructed event generator a large number of illustrative results is obtained, which show the relevance of backgrounds to a number of signals. For LEP 200 the W-pair signal and its background are discussed, for higher energies also Z-pair and single W and Z signals and backgrounds are presented.