MODEL-INDEPENDENT GLOBAL CONSTRAINTS ON NEW PHYSICS

Using effective-Lagrangian techniques we perform a systematic survey o f the lowest-dimension effective interactions through which heavy phys ics might manifest itself in present experiments. We do not restrict o urselves to special classes of effective interactions (such as ''obliq ue'' corrections). We compute the effects of these operators on all cu rrently well-measured electroweak observables, both at low energies an d at the Z resonance, and perform a global fit to their coefficients. Despite the fact that a great many operators arise in our survey, we f ind that most are quite strongly bounded by the current data. We use o ur survey to systematically identify those effective interactions whic h are not well bounded by the data-these could very well include large new-physics contributions. Our results may also be used to efficientl y confront specific models for new physics with the data, as we illust rate with an example.