Production of single W bosons at LEP

We report on the observation of single W boson production in a data sample collected by the L3 detector at LEP2. The signal consists of large missing energy final states with a single energetic lepton or two hadronic jets. The cross-section is measured to be 0.61(-0.33)(+0.43) +/- 0.05 pb at the centre of mass energy root s = 172 GeV, consistent with the Standard Model expectation. From this measurement the following limits on the anomalous gamma WW gauge couplings are derived at 95% CL: -3.6 < Delta kappa gamma < 1.5 and -3.6 < lambda gamma < 3.6. (C) 1997 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.