Abstract

A new heavy gauge boson, W′, decaying to a muon and a neutrino, is searched for in pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV. The data, collected with the CMS detector at the LHC, correspond to an integrated luminosity of 36 pb−1. No significant excess of events above the standard model expectation is found in the transverse mass distribution of the muon–neutrino system. Masses below 1.40 TeV are excluded at the 95% confidence level for a sequential standard-model-like W′. The W′ mass lower limit increases to 1.58 TeV when the present analysis is combined with the CMS result for the electron channel