The Four Polarizations of the W at High Energies

In the Standard Model (SM), the electroweak gauge bosons acquire mass through the Higgs mechanism and therefore possess longitudinal polarization state when at rest, in addition to the transverse polarization states, unlike massless photon and gluon. These different polarization states interfere with each other in a quantum mechanical sense, leading to non-vanishing contributions even at the cross section level. In this talk, I will first present our analytical work on the mathematical structure of the interference terms in different gauge choices at the matrix element level. Then I will discuss our case studies of helicity polarization interference up to the cross section level to understand the behavior of the interference and to explore the conditions under which the interference is suppressed and can be avoided.