Sensitivity of the LHC to Electroweak Symmetry Breaking: Equivalence Theorem as a Criterion

Abstract

Based upon our recent study on the intrinsic connection between the longitudinal weak-boson scatterings and probing the electroweak symmetry breaking (EWSB) mechanism, we reveal the profound physical content of the Equivalence Theorem (ET) as being able to discriminate physical processes which are sensitive/insensitive to probing the EWSB sector. With this physical content of the ET as a criterion, we analyze the complete set of the bosonic operators in the electroweak chiral Lagrangian and systematically classify the sensitivities to probing all these operators at the CERN LHC via the weak-boson fusion in $W^\pm W^\pm$ channel. This is achieved by developing a precise power counting rule (a generalization from Weinberg's counting method) to {\it separately} count the power dependences on the energy $E$ and all relevant mass scales.