Fermiophobic gauge boson phenomenology in 221 models

Models with extra gauge symmetry are well-motivated extensions of the Standard Model. In this paper, we study an extended gauge model with a heavy neutral gauge boson Z′ which is fermiophobic. Thus, the production of such particles can occur via vector boson fusion, with subsequent decays into WW or Zh. We investigate the collider phenomenology of such Z′ s in the context of both the 14 TeV LHC and the future Compact Linear Collider. We find that looking at ℓℓbb final states provides a rich opportunity to discover such new vector bosons where conventional search strategies in the dilepton channel would fail. In particular, we optimize our analysis by putting in kinematic cuts deriving model-independent values of σ×BR needed for a 5σ discovery at the LHC. We then translate this into the parameter space of a specific model for illustration purpose—our results show that fermiophobic Z′s are discoverable in the ℓℓbb channel for a wide range of parameter values.