Estimating the sensitivity of the CERN LHC to electroweak symmetry breaking: Longitudinal-Goldstone boson equivalence as a criterion

Abstract

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 or 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-antiquark annihilations. These two kinds of processes are shown to be complementary in probing the EWSB mechanism.