The W and Z boson spin observables as messengers of new physics at LHC

TL;DR

This paper shows how analyzing W and Z boson spin observables via angular asymmetries can reveal details of their production mechanisms, offering a new approach to uncover potential new physics at the LHC.

Contribution

It introduces a method to extract eight multipole parameters from angular asymmetries, enabling detailed analysis of boson production mechanisms beyond traditional searches.

Findings

Effective discrimination of production mechanisms demonstrated

Method applicable to various processes like top decays and Drell-Yan

Potential to identify new physics signatures

Abstract

The successful LHC operation suggests going beyond the search of excess of events for the quest of new physics. We demonstrate that the eight multipole parameters describing the spin state of the W or Z bosons are able to disentangle their hidden production mechanism. They can be separately extracted from well defined angular asymmetries in the leptonic distribution of boson decays. The discriminating power of this analysis is well illustrated by: (i) polarised top quark decays, (ii) two body decay of heavy resonances, (iii) Drell-Yan production of Z plus jets, (iv) Z boson plus missing transverse energy.