RARE DECAYS AS DIAGNOSTICS FOR Z' GAUGE COUPLINGS AT HADRON COLLIDERS

We propose rare decays of Z' --> f1f2VBARV (with V = W or Z, and f1,2 ordinary fermions) as diagnostic tests for gauge couplings of possible Z' gauge bosons at future hadron colliders. Because of the collinear singularity such decay rates have a logarithmic enhancement proportional to ln2(M(Z')2/M(V)2). For M(Z') approximately 1 TeV and a large class of models, there would be a sufficiently large (> 10(2)) number of leptonic and semileptonic events at projected luminosities at the CERN Large Hadron Collider and Superconducting Super Collider. A discussion of backgrounds and a comparison with the forward-backward asymmetry are given.