Experimental aspects of gauge boson production in e+e- collisions at √s=500 GeV

The experimental quality of the determination of the electroweak three boson couplings at a linear e+e- collider is discussed. The process e+e- → W+W- at a c.m. energy of 500 GeV is simulated and three oberservables are considered the total cross section σ, the double differential production and decay angular distributions d2σ/d cos θ d cos θ* the extraxtion of the longitudinally polarized component dσL/dcosθ. If one W decays lentonically and the other one hadronically, one obtains a signal with high efficiency and virtually no background. An integrated luminosity of 10fb-1, corresponding to a year of data taking, allows measurements of the couplings to better than δκ, δλ ≅ 0.01. The extraction of the longitudinally polarized component can be performed to about 10% accuracy. Essential detector requirements are a good electron and muon identification, whereas the results are largely independent of the energy resolution for jets. The angular interval for accepting events should be as large as possible. Effects of bremsstrahlung or beamstrahlung are controllable. (orig.)