Eur. Phys. J. C (2005) 39: 1-11
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjcd/s2004-02-001-y

Scientific Note

Prospects for the detection of Kaluza-Klein excitations of gauge bosons in the ATLAS detector at the LHC

¹ Université de Montréal, and TRIUMF (Vancouver), Canada
² INFN, Sezione di Pavia, Via Bassi 6, Pavia, Italy

Received: 20 March 2003
Accepted: 20 August 2003
Published online: 10 March 2004

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 γ and Z bosons provide a striking signature which can be detected at the LHC. 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 lepton-lepton invariant mass will be detected if the compactification scale (M _c ) is below 5.8 TeV. If no peak is observed, with an integrated luminosity of 300 fb^–1 a limit of M _c <12–13.5 TeV can be obtained from a detailed study of the shape of the lepton-lepton invariant mass distribution. If a peak is observed, the study of the angular distribution of the two leptons will allow to distinguish the KK excitations from alternative models yielding the same signature.

PACS: 11.10Kk – 11.25Mj – 13.85-t