Weakly coupled neutral gauge bosons at future linear colliders

A weakly coupled new neutral gauge boson forms a narrow resonance that is hard to discover directly in e(+)e(-) collisions. However, if the gauge boson mass is below the center-of-mass energy, it can be produced through processes where the effective energy is reduced due to initial-state radiation and beamstrahlung. It is shown that at a high-luminosity linear collider, such a gauge boson can be searched for with very high sensitivity, leading to a substantial improvement compared to existing limits from the Tevatron and also extending beyond the expected reach of the LHC in most models. If a new vector boson is discovered either at the Tevatron Run II, the LHC, or the linear collider, its properties can be determined at the linear collider with high precision, thus helping to reveal the origin of the new boson.