PHENOMENOLOGY OF A Z' COUPLING ONLY TO 3RD-FAMILY FERMIONS - ART. NO.075001

The phenomenology of an additional U(1) neutral gauge boson Z' coupled to the third family of fermions is discussed. One might expect such a particle to contribute to processes where taus, b and t quarks are pr oduced. Precision data from CERN LEP1 put severe constraints on the mi xing and heavy-boson mass. We find that the effects of such a particle could not be observed at hadronic colliders, be it at the Fermilab Te vatron or the CERN LHC, because of the QCD background. At LEP2 and fut ure e(+)e(-) linear colliders, one could instead hope to observe such effects, in particular, for b (b) over bar final states. [S0556-2821(9 8)02217-6].