Identifying the origin of new gauge bosons at the Superconducting Super Collider.

Abstract

We examine the ability of the detector of the Solenoidal Detector Collaboration (SDC) to identify the origin of a new neutral gauge boson ${Z}_{2}$ in the TeV mass range at the Superconducting Super Collider. Specifically, given the measurements of the ${Z}_{2}$ production cross section, width, and leptonic forward-backward asymmetry, together with their associated statistical and systematic errors, we address two related questions: (i) For two differnet extended electroweak models, up to what mass can their corresponding ${Z}_{2}$ bosons be distinguished, and (ii) how well can the ${Z}_{2}$ couplings be determined? Our calculations include $O({\ensuremath{\alpha}}_{s}^{2})$ QCD, as well as oblique electroweak radiative corrections to the above quantities, and allow for uncertainties due to structure functions, detector efficiencies, lepton identification, luminosity measurement errors, and finite lepton-pair mass resolution, using the specifications of the SDC detector. Nine distinct classes of extended electroweak models are investigated and results are obtained for integrated luminosities of ${10}^{4}$ and ${10}^{5}$ ${\mathrm{pb}}^{\ensuremath{-}1}$.