Discovery and identification of W ' bosons in e gamma ->nu q plus X - art.no. 053005

We examine the sensitivity of the process e gamma --> nuq + X to W' bosons which arise in various extensions of the standard model. We consider photon spectra from both the Weizsacker-Williams process and from a backscattered laser. The process is found to be sensitive to W' masses up to several TeV , depending on the model, the center of mass energy, the integrated luminos ity, and assumptions regarding systematic errors. If extra gauge bosons wer e discovered first in other experiments, the process could also be used to measure W' couplings. This measurement would provide information that could be used to unravel the underlying theory, complementary to measurements at the CERN Large Hadron Collider.