Search for a W' Boson Decaying to a Top and Bottom Quark Pair in 1.8 TeV p-pbar Collisions

We report the results of a search for a W' boson produced in p-pbar collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 1.8 TeV using a 106 pb-1 data sample recorded by the Collider Detector at Fermilab. We observe no significant excess of events above background for a W' boson decaying to a top and bottom quark pair, with the top quark subsequently decaying into a semileptonic final state. These data allow us to set limits on the rate of W' boson production and decay. In a model where this boson would mediate interactions involving a massive right-handed neutrino (nu_R) and has Standard Model strength couplings, we exclude a W' boson with mass between 225 and 536 GeV/c**2 at 95% confidence level for M_W' >> M_nu_R and between 225 and 566 GeV/c**2 at 95% confidence level for M_W' < M_nu_R.