Study of Electroweak Gauge Boson Scattering in the WZ Channel with the ATLAS Detector at the Large Hadron Collider

The Standard Model of particle physics is a very well tested gauge theory describing the strong, weak and electromagnetic interactions between elementary particles through the exchange of force carriers called gauge bosons. Its high predictive power stems from its ability to derive the properties of the interactions it describes from fundamental symmetries of nature. Yet, it is not a final theory as there are several phenomena it cannot explain. Furthermore, not all of its predictions have been studied with sufficient precision, e.g. the properties of the newly discovered Higgs boson. Therefore, further probing of the Standard Model is necessary and may result in finding possible indications for new physics. The non-abelian SU(2)L×U(1)Y symmetry group determines the properties of the electromagnetic and weak interactions giving rise to self-couplings between the electroweak gauge bosons, i.e. the massive W and Z boson, and the massless photon, via triple and quartic gauge couplings. Studies carried out over the past 20 years at various particle accelerator experiments have shed light on the structure of the triple gauge couplings but few results on quartic gauge couplings are available. The electroweak self-couplings are intertwined with the electroweak symmetry breaking and thus the Higgs boson through the scattering of massive electroweak gauge bosons. Both the W and Z boson couple to the Higgs boson and may interact with each other by exchanging it. Theory predictions yield physical results at high energies only if either both the self-couplings and Higgs boson properties are as described by the Standard Model or if they deviate from its predictions and contributions from new physics are present to render the calculations finite. This makes electroweak gauge boson scattering a powerful tool to probe the Standard Model and search for possible effects of new physics. The small cross section of massive electroweak gauge boson scattering necessitates high centre-of-mass energies and luminosities to study these processes successfully. The Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN is a circular proton-proton collider equipped to supply a suitable environment for such studies with the colliding protons being the sources for the scattering of massive electroweak gauge bosons. The dataset collected in 2012 by the ATLAS detector at the LHC with a total luminosity of 20.3 fb−1 and a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV is analysed in this work. The elastic scattering process WZ → WZ is studied due to its clean signal properties. It provides a complementary measurement to W ±W ± → W ±W ± which reported the first significant evidence for massive electroweak gauge boson scattering. Given the current data, W Z → W Z scattering is not observed with large significantly. A cross section upper limit of 2.5fb at 95% confidence level is measured, compatible with the cross section of 0.54 fb predicted by the Standard Model. In addition, distributions for several observables sensitive to electroweak gauge boson scattering are unfolded, removing effects caused by the measuring process. Physics beyond the Standard Model is probed in the framework of the electroweak chiral Lagrangian which expresses the size of effects from new physics in terms of strength parameters. The two strength parameters influencing the quartic gauge couplings are constrained to −0.44 < α4 < 0.49 and −0.49 < α5 < 0.47 thus limiting the possible size of new physics contributions.