Like-Charged Gauge-Boson Pairs as a Probe of Electroweak Symmetry Breaking

Abstract

Pairs of like-charged $W$ bosons, $W^{+}{W}^{+}$ and $W^{-}{W}^{-}$, are a unique probe of the electroweak-symmetry-breaking sector since they have no background from $q\overline{q}$ annihilation. We compute the observable signal in several models and the irreducible QCD background. We find that the signal will be observable at the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) if and only if the symmetry-breaking sector is strongly interacting, provided the SSC operates at full energy and luminosity.