Signals of additional Z boson in e+e-\to W+W^- at the ILC with polarized beams

Abstract

We consider the possibility of fingerprinting the presence of heavy additional Z' bosons that arise naturally in extensions of the standard model such as E_6 models and left-right symmetric models, through their mixing with the standard model Z boson. By considering a class of observables including total cross sections, energy distributions and angular distributions of decay leptons we find significant deviation from the standard model predictions for these quantities with right-handed electrons and left-handed positrons at \sqrt{s}=800 GeV. The deviations being less pronounced at smaller centre of mass energies as the models are already tightly constrained. Our work suggests that the ILC should have a strong beam polarization physics program particularly with these configurations. On the other hand, a forward backward asymmetry and lepton fraction in the backward direction are more sensitive to new physics with realistic polarization due to interesting interplay with the neutrino t- channel diagram. This process complements the study of fermion pair production processes that have been considered for discrimination between these models.

Comments: 23 pages, 9 figures, uses plain latex; substantially improved discussion, references added, version accepted for publication in JHEP