Probing the composite Higgs boson

We consider theories in which the Higgs boson and absorbed Goldstone bosons are composite on a scale $\ensuremath{\Lambda}\ensuremath{\gtrsim}2$ TeV, such as the recently proposed top-mode standard model or its fourth-family variant. Within the framework of such theories we describe how experimental bounds may be placed on the scale A from longitudinal-vector-boson scattering experiments at the Superconducting Super Collider (SSC) or CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC). The main point of the paper is to show that the top-mode standard model is testable at the SSC (LHC) providing the cutoff is sufficiently low. We illustrate our strategy by considering three production channels: namely, ${Z}^{0}{Z}^{0}$, ${W}^{+}{W}^{\ensuremath{-}}$, and ${Z}^{0}{W}^{\ifmmode\pm\else\textpm\fi{}}$ pair production at SSC and LHC energies. Our tree-level results indicate that the SSC (LHC) will be able to set limits on $\ensuremath{\Lambda}$ of about 5 TeV (2 TeV).