Eur. Phys. J. C 32, s2.55-s2.67 (2004)
DOI: 10.1140/epjcd/s2003-01-016-2

Prospects for observing the Kaluza-Klein excitations of the W boson in the ATLAS detector at the LHC

G. Polesello and M. Prata

INFN, Sezione di Pavia, Dipartimento di Fisica Nucleare e Teorica, Universitá di Pavia, Via Bassi 6, Pavia, Italy

(Received 9 September 2003 / Published online 17 December 2003)

Abstract

Kaluza-Klein excitations of the gauge bosons are a notable feature of theories with "small" (~ 1 TeV) extra dimensions. The leptonic decays of the excitations of the W boson provide at the LHC the striking signature of events containing an isolated high P_T lepton accompanied by a high transverse momentum imbalance.

We investigate the reach for these signatures through a parametrized simulation of the ATLAS detector. With an integrated luminosity of 100 fb^-1 a peak in the transverse invariant mass of the lepton-neutrino system will be detected if the compactification scale (M_c) is below 6 TeV. If no signal is observed, with an integrated luminosity of 100 fb^-1 a limit of M_c>11.7 TeV can be obtained from the study of the lepton-neutrino transverse mass distribution below the peak. If a peak is detected, a measurement of the couplings of the boson to leptons and quarks can be performed for M_c up to ~5 TeV.

PACS: 11.10Kk - 11.25Mj - 13.85-t

© Società Italiana di Fisica, Springer-Verlag 2004