Production of heavy spin-(3/2 fermions in colliders

Abstract

If very heavy quarks exist in the standard model, it is likely that spin-(3/2 excited states will arise. Moreover, a recent model indicates that deeply bound nucleonlike bound states having a nearby spin-(3/2 excitation will be present. We calculate production rates for creating pairs of color-singlet or -triplet spin-(3/2 fermions in proton-(anti)proton colliders. In pointlike approximation, the rates turn out to be considerably larger than those for ordinary fermions. We estimate the influence of form factors, making some reasonable guesses. We show that very different decay patterns emerge depending whether or not these states are pointlike. We estimate that the Superconducting Super Collider could uncover spin-(3/2 quarks up to a mass around 1 TeV.