The Bosonic Sector of the Electroweak Interactions, Status and Tests at Present and Future Colliders

Abstract

The status of the Standard Model (SM) is reviewed. We emphazize the fact that in spite of the success of the SM for the descrition of the fermionic sector, the status of the bosonic sector (gauge and scalar) suffers from many theoretical deficiencies and from the lack of empirical support. This situation, which leaves room for several types of extensions or alternatives to SM, strongly motivates the pursue of intense efforts for finding hints of New Physics (NP) effects. We present a phenomenological description valid for energies lying below the NP scale. We discuss the indirect constraints established from high precision tests at LEP1, as well as the direct tests that could be performed at future machines