Strongly Interacting Vector Bosons at the LHC: Quartic Anomalous Couplings

We analyze the potential of the CERN Large Hadron Collider to study anomalous quartic vector--boson interactions through the production of vector--boson pairs accompanied by jets. In the framework of $SU(2)_L \otimes U(1)_Y$ chiral Lagrangians, we examine all effective operators of order $p^4$ that lead to new four--gauge--boson interactions but do not alter trilinear vertices. In our analyses, we perform the full tree level calculation of the processes leading to two jets plus vector--boson pairs, $W^+W^-$, $W^\pm W^\pm$, $W^\pm Z$, or $ZZ$, taking properly into account the interference between the standard model and the anomalous contributions. We obtain the bounds that can be placed on the anomalous quartic interactions and we study the strategies to distinguish the possible new couplings.