Signal and Backgrounds for the Single Production of Scalar and Vector Leptoquarks at the LHC

Abstract

We perform a detailed analysis of the potentiality of the CERN Large Hadron Collider to study the single production of leptoquarks via $pp\to e^{\pm }q\to$ leptoquark $\to e^{\pm }q$, with $e^{\pm }$ generated by the splitting of photons radiated by the protons. Working with the most general $SU(2{)}_L\otimes U(1{)}_Y$ invariant effective lagrangian for scalar and vector leptoquarks, we analyze in detail the leptoquark signals and backgrounds that lead to a final state containing an $e^{\pm }$ and a hard jet with approximately balanced transverse momenta. Our results indicate that the LHC will be able to discover leptoquarks with masses up to 2--3 TeV, depending on their type, for Yukawa couplings of the order of the electromagnetic one.

Comments: Revtex, 23 pages, 11 postscript files. Uses axodraw.sty (included) and epsfig.sty. Typos corrected. To be published in Phys. Rev. D