Estimating The Sensitivity Of The LHC To Electroweak Symmetry Breaking: Longitudinal-Goldstone Boson Equivalence As A Criterion

H. -J. He, Y. -P. Kuang, C. -P. Yuan

Published 1996-11-13Version 1

Based upon our recent study, we reveal the profound physical content of the longitudinal-Goldstone boson equivalence theorem as being able to discriminate physical processes which are sensitive/insensitive to probing the electroweak symmetry breaking (EWSB) sector. We then develop a precise electroweak power counting rule (a generalization from Weinberg's counting method) to `separately' count the power dependences on the energy E and all relevant mass scales. With these, we analyze the complete set of the bosonic operators in the electroweak chiral Lagrangian and systematically estimate and classify the sensitivities for testing all these effective operators at the CERN LHC via the weak-boson fusions and quark-anti-quark annihilations. These two kinds of processes are shown to be `complementary' in probing the EWSB mechanism.