Prospects for Producing and Detecting a Spinless W Boson in High-Energy Neutrino and Muon Experiments

Abstract

We discuss here the possible production of the hypothetical spin-zero W boson (W0) recently proposed by T. D. Lee, either through the decay of a directly produced spin-one W(W1) or by direct production in the reactions ν+Fe→Fe+W0+μ and μ+Fe→Fe+W0+ν. Theoretical cross sections and differential distributions are presented here for W1 masses between 2 and 40 GeV/c2 and W0 masses between 2 and 8 GeV/c2 for beam energies from 80 to 300 GeV. We show that assuming nonzero muon mass in the calculations for a neutrino beam, rather than zero muon mass as suggested by Lee, can increase the total theoretical cross section by up to a factor of 1000 if M1 is greater than 4M0 or if the W1's anomalous magnetic moment is near 1. In general, the production cross sections with incident neutrinos for W0's are down from those for W1's by a factor of 20-100, while the cross sections with incident muons are nearly equal. The effects of the W1's anomalous magnetic moment, W0 and W1 mass, and incident energy upon cross sections and distributions are discussed for the coherent and incoherent cases. Possible signatures for detecting a W0 either in the decay of a W1 or in a q2-ν plot in direct production are discussed.