Origin and phenomenology of weak-doublet spin-1 bosons

We study phenomenological consequences of the Standard Model extension by the new spin-1 fields with the internal quantum numbers of the electroweak Higgs doublets. We show, that there are at least three different classes of theories, all motivated by the hierarchy problem, which predict appearance of such vector weak-doublets not far from the weak scale. The common feature for all the models is the existence of an SU(3)(W) gauge extension of the weak SU(2)(W) group, which is broken down to the latter at some energy scale around TeV. The Higgs doublet then emerges as either a pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone boson of a global remnant of SU(3)(W), or as a symmetry partner of the true eaten-up Goldstone boson. In the third class, the Higgs is a scalar component of a high-dimensional SU(3)(W) gauge field. The common phenomenological feature of these theories is the existence of the electroweak doublet vectors (Z*, W*), which in contrast to well-known Z' and W' bosons posses only anomalous (magnetic moment type) couplings with ordinary light fermions. This fact leads to some unique signatures for their detection at the hadron colliders. (C) 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.