We present a new probe of strongly coupled electroweak symmetry breaking at the 14 TeV LHC by measuring a phase shift in the event distribution of the decay azimuthal angles in massive gauge boson scattering. One generically expects a large phase shift in the longitudinal gauge boson scattering amplitude due to the presence of broad resonances. This phase shift is observable as an interference effect between the strongly interacting longitudinal modes and the transverse modes of the gauge bosons. We find that even very broad resonances of masses up to 900 GeV can be probed at $3\sigma$ significance with a $3000{\mathrm{fb}}^{-1}$ run of the LHC by using this technique. We also present the estimated reach for a future 50 TeV proton-proton collider.

• Received 5 March 2014

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevD.92.116002