Early searches for new physics with the ATLAS detector

The ATLAS detector has been used to search for high-mass states, such as new heavy charged gauge bosons W', decaying to an electron plus missing energy, and narrow resonances in two-jet final states, formed by the decay of excited quarks (q*) predicted in a quark composite model. Based on proton-proton collisions at a centre of mass energy of 7 TeV produced at the Large Hadron Collider, we present limits on the cross section times branching ratio of W′ → eν, using the Sequential Standard Model (SSM) W' as a benchmark model and on the product of cross section and detector acceptance for excited quark (q*) production as a function of q* mass.