Probing new physics with tau-leptons at the LHC

Abstract

We discuss new physics that can show up in the ${\tau }^{+}{\tau }^{-}$ production process at the LHC but not in the dimuon or the dielectron channels. We consider three different generic possibilities: a new resonance in the Drell-Yan process in the form of a non-universal $Z^{\prime }$; a new non-resonant contribution to $q\bar{q}\to {\tau }^{+}{\tau }^{-}$ in the form of leptoquarks; and contributions from gluon fusion due to effective lepton gluonic couplings. We emphasize the use of the charge asymmetry both to discover new physics and to distinguish between different possibilities

Comments: Prepared for TAU2012