What if Charged Current Events at Large Q2 are Observed at HERA ?

Abstract

An excess of events at large Q2 with a positron in the final state has been observed at HERA which, if confirmed, would be a signal of new physics. It is not clear at present if a signal of comparable rate is also seen in the charged current channel (with an antineutrino in the final state). In this note we analyse the implications of the presence of such a signal in models of new physics based on contact terms, leptoquarks and squarks with R-violating decays. We find that in all cases the most likely possibility is that the charged current signal is absent. As a consequence if this signal is present the resulting indications are very selective. In particular for squarks only charged current events with multi-quark final states are possible with quite definite predictions on the spectrum of supersymmetric particles.