Prospects for observing the Kaluza-Klein excitations of the W boson in the ATLAS detector at the LHC

Kaluza-Klein excitations of the gauge bosons are a notable feature of theories with "small" (similar to 1 TeV) extra dimensions. The leptonic decays of the excitations of the W boson provide at the LHC the striking signature of events containing an isolated high PT lepton accompanied by a high transverse momentum imbalance. We investigate the reach for these signatures through a parametrized simulation of the ATLAS detector. With an integrated luminosity of 100 fb(-1) a peak in the transverse invariant mass of the lepton-neutrino system will be detected if the compactification scale (M-c) is below 6 TeV. If no signal is observed, with an integrated luminosity of 100 fb(-1) a limit of M-c > 11.7 TeV can be obtained from the study of the lepton-neutrino transverse mass distribution below the peak. If a peak is detected, a measurement of the couplings of the boson to leptons and quarks can be performed for M-c up to similar to 5 TeV.