Search for a heavy gauge boson decaying to a charged lepton and a neutrino in 1 fb-1 of pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV using the ATLAS detector

TL;DR

This paper reports a search for heavy gauge bosons (W') decaying to leptons and neutrinos using 1 fb^-1 of 7 TeV proton-proton collision data from the ATLAS detector, setting mass exclusion limits.

Contribution

First search for W' bosons in leptonic decay channels at 7 TeV with ATLAS, establishing new mass exclusion limits up to 2.15 TeV.

Findings

No excess observed beyond Standard Model predictions.

W' bosons with masses up to 2.15 TeV are excluded at 95% confidence level.

Analysis demonstrates the sensitivity of ATLAS to high-mass new physics.

Abstract

The ATLAS detector at the LHC is used to search for high-mass states, such as heavy charged gauge bosons (W'), decaying to a charged lepton (electron or muon) and a neutrino. Results are presented based on the analysis of pp collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 1.04 fb^-1. No excess beyond Standard Model expectations is observed. A W' with Sequential Standard Model couplings is excluded at the 95% confidence level for masses up to 2.15 TeV.