  Heavy resonances appearing in the clean Drell-Yan channel may be the first
new physics to be observed at the proton-proton CERN LHC. If a new resonance is
discovered at the LHC as a peak in the dilepton invariant mass distribution,
the characterization of its spin and couplings will proceed via measuring
production rates and angular distributions of the decay products. We discuss
the discrimination of the spin-1 of Z' representative models (Z'_{SSM},
Z'_{psi}, Z'_{eta}, Z'_{chi}, Z'_{LR}, and Z'_{ALR}) against the
Randall-Sundrum graviton resonance (spin-2) and a spin-0 resonance (sneutrino)
with the same mass and producing the same number of events under the observed
peak. To assess the range of the Z' mass where the spin determination can be
performed to a given confidence level, we focus on the angular distributions of
the Drell-Yan leptons, in particular we use as a basic observable an
angular-integrated center-edge asymmetry, A_{CE}. The spin of a heavy Z' gauge
boson can be established with A_{CE} up to M_{Z'} \simeq 3.0 TeV, for an
integrated luminosity of 100 fb^{-1}, or minimal number of events around 110.
We also examine the distinguishability of the considered Z' models from one
another, once the spin-1 has been established, using the total dilepton
production cross section. With some assumption, one might be able to
distinguish among these Z' models at 95% C.L. up to M_{Z'} \simeq 2.1 TeV.

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology