The effective use of precision electroweak measurements

Several reasonably model-independent formulations of the implications of new physics for precision electroweak measurements have been developed over the past years, most notably by Peskin and Takeuchi, and by Altarelliet al. These formulations work by identifying a small, but useful, set of parameters through which new physics often enters into well-measured physical observables. For the theories to which such an analysis applies, this approach …