Heavy fermions virtual effects at e^+ e^- colliders

Abstract

We derive the low-energy electroweak effective lagrangian for the case of additional heavy, unmixed, sequential fermions. Present LEP1 data still allow for the presence of a new quark and/or lepton doublet with masses greater than $M_Z/2$, provided that these multiplets are sufficiently degenerate. Keeping in mind this constraint, we analyse the virtual effects of heavy chiral fermions in $e^+ e^- \raw W^+ W^-$ process at energies $\sqrt{p^2} = 200,~500,~1000$ GeV, provided by LEP2 and Next Linear Collider. The effects will be unobservable at LEP2, being smaller than $3.0\cdot 10^{-3}$, while more interesting is the case of NLC, where an enhancement factor, due to a delay of unitarity, gives deviations from SM of the order 10-50 per cent, for a wide range of new fermions masses.