Production cross-sections for unstable particles

The top-quark, W and Z(0) bosons have widths that are a sizable fraction of their masses and will be produced copiously at upcoming accelerators. Yet S-matrix theory cannot treat unstable particles as external states. Dealing with complete matrix elements involving their decay products complicates calculations considerably and is unnecessary in many practical situations. It is shown how to construct physically meaningful production cross-sections for unstable particles by extracting that part of the matrix element that corresponds to finite-range space-time propagation. This procedure avoids the need to define unstable particles in external states and we argue its favour as providing a solution to a long-standing problem in physics. As an example the results are applied to the calculation of the cross-section sigma(e(+)e(-) --> Z(0)Z(0)). (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.