Lower Bound onW±-Meson Production in High-Energy Proton-Proton Collisions

A lower bound is obtained for differential cross sections of $W^{\pm }$-meson production in high-energy proton-proton collisions. Use is made of a current-algebra sum rule derived from time components of weak currents, and of a Regge argument based on duality. Additional physical assumptions enable us to calculate a lower bound on the sum of the total production cross sections for $W^{+}$ and $W^{-}$ mesons. The bound turns out large enough to be of practical significance in future experiments, although it is not applicable to data at presently available energies.