Heavy neutral leptons and high-intensity observables
Asmaa Abada, Ana M. Teixeira
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24 pages, 13 figures; to appear in the special issue of Frontiers in Physics on "Exploring Muon, Neutrino and Astroparticle Physics at the Intensity Frontiers"
New Physics models in which the Standard Model particle content is enlarged via the addition of sterile fermions remain among the most minimal and yet most appealing constructions, particularly since these states are present as building blocks of numerous mechanisms of neutrino mass generation. Should the new sterile states have non-negligible mixings to the active (light) neutrinos, and if they are not excessively heavy, one expects important contributions to numerous high-intensity observables, among them charged lepton flavour violating muon decays and transitions, and lepton electric dipole moments. We briefly review the prospects of these minimal SM extensions to several of the latter observables, considering both simple extensions and complete models of neutrino mass generation. We emphasise the existing synergy between different observables at the Intensity Frontier, which will be crucial in unveiling the new model at work.
New physics scenarios beyond the Standard Model (SM) for neutrino mass mechanism often necessitate the existence of a neutral scalar $H$ and/or doubly-charged scalar $H^{\pm\pm}$, which couple to the SM charged leptons in a flavor violating way, while evading all existing constraints. Such scalars could be effectively produced at future lepton colliders like CEPC, ILC, FCC-ee and CLIC, either on-shell or off-shell, and induce striking charged lepton flavor violating (LFV) signals. We find that a large parameter space of the scalar masses and the LFV couplings can be probed at lepton colliders,…
Production and decay rates, polarization and differential distributions of decay products are calculated for a heavy neutrino produced in charged pseudoscalar meson decay and decaying itself in charged pseudoscalar and lepton or a lepton-antilepton pair of different flavours and a light SM like (anti)neutrino.
We review and revise phenomenology of the GeV-scale heavy neutral leptons (HNLs). We extend the previous analyses by including more channels of HNLs production and decay and provide with more refined treatment, including QCD corrections for the HNLs of masses $\mathcal{O}(1)$ GeV. We summarize the relevance of individual production and decay channels for different masses, resolving a few discrepancies in the literature. Our final results are directly suitable for sensitivity studies of particle physics experiments (ranging from proton beam-dump to the LHC) aiming at searches for heavy neutral …
Many new physics scenarios beyond the Standard Model often necessitate the existence of a (light) neutral scalar $H$, which might couple to the charged leptons in a flavor violating way, while evading all existing constraints. We show that such scalars could be effectively produced at future lepton colliders, either on-shell or off-shell depending on their mass, and induce lepton flavor violating (LFV) signals, i.e. $e^+ e^- \to \ell_α^\pm \ell_β^\mp (+H)$ with $α\neq β$. We find that a large parameter space of the scalar mass and the LFV couplings can be probed, well beyond the current low-en…
A beam dump experiment can be seamlessly added to the {proposed} International Linear Collider (ILC) program because the high energy electron beam should be dumped after the collision point. The ILC beam dump experiment will provide an excellent opportunity to search for new long-lived particles. Since many of them can be produced by a rare decay of standard model particles, we evaluate spectra of the mesons and $τ$ lepton at the decay based on the PHITS and PYTHIA8 simulations. As a motivated physics case, we study the projected sensitivity of heavy neutral leptons at the ILC beam dump experi…
With very few exceptions, the large amount of available experimental bounds on heavy neutral leptons - HNL - have been derived relying on the assumption of the existence of a single (usually Majorana) sterile fermion state that mixes with only one lepton flavour. However, most of the extensions of the Standard Model involving sterile fermions predict the existence of several HNLs, with complex mixing patterns to all flavours. Consequently, most of the experimental bounds for HNLs need to be recast before being applied to a generic scenario. In this work, we focus on LHC searches of heavy neutr…
Heavy neutral leptons are predicted in many extensions of the Standard Model with massive neutrinos. If kinematically accessible, they can be copiously produced from kaon and pion decays in atmospheric showers, and subsequently decay inside large neutrino detectors. We perform a search for these long-lived particles using Super-Kamiokande multi-GeV neutrino data and derive stringent limits on the mixing with electron, muon and tau neutrinos as a function of the long-lived particle mass. We also present the limits on the branching ratio versus lifetime plane, which are helpful in determining th…
We perform a global analysis of the lepton-quark neutral current data on the low scale gravity model, which arises from the extra dimensions. The global data include HERA neutral current deep-inelastic scattering, Drell-yan production at the Tevatron, and fermion pair production at LEPII. The Drell-yan production, due to the large invariant mass data, provides the strongest constraint. Combining all data, the effective Planck scale must be larger than about 1.12 TeV for $n=3$ and 0.94 TeV for $n=4$ at 95%CL.
Motivated by the recent search for a Higgs-Portal Scalar decaying inside the MicroBooNE detector, we demonstrate that the same search can be used to constrain Heavy Neutral Leptons. These are gauge-singlet fermions that interact with the Standard Model by mixing with neutrinos only and could be related to the origin of neutrino masses. By recasting the results of the MicroBooNE Collaboration's analysis, we show that, for a Heavy Neutral Lepton that mixes predominantly with muon-flavored neutrinos, previously unexplored parameter space can be excluded for masses between 30 and 150 MeV. Addition…
We explore the possibility of relating extra dimensions with light and heavy Dirac-type neutral leptons and develop a framework for testing them in various laboratory experiments. The Kaluza-Klein modes in the large extra dimension models of the light neutral leptons could mix with the standard model neutrinos and produce observable effects in the oscillation experiments. We show that the chirality flipping up-scattering processes occurring through either neutrino magnetic dipole moment or the weakly coupled scalar interactions can also produce heavy Kaluza-Klein modes of the corresponding rig…
We investigate the rare electromagnetic decays of neutral vector mesons (exemplified by $J/ψ$, $Υ$, $ρ^0$, $ω,ϕ$, \ldots) into four charged leptons ($2(e^+e^-)$, $2(μ^+μ^-)$, $2(τ^+τ^-)$, $e^+e^-μ^+μ^-$, $e^+e^-τ^+τ^-$, \ldots) at lowest order in QED. In contrast to the case of vector meson decay into a single pair of leptons, the lepton mass must be retained in these four-lepton decay channels to cutoff the mass singularity. Owing to more pronounced collinear enhancement, the branching fractions of vector mesons decays into $ 2(e^+e^-)$ are considerably greater than those for decays into $2(μ…
One of the main purposes of SHiP experiment is to shed light on neutrino mass generation mechanisms like the so-called seesaw. We consider a minimal type-I seesaw neutrino mass mechanism model with two heavy neutral leptons (right-handed or sterile neutrinos) with arbitrary masses. Extremely high active-sterile mixing angle requires a correlation between the phases of the Dirac neutrino couplings. Actual experimental limits on the half-life of neutrinoless double beta decay $0νββ$-rate on the active-sterile mixing angle are not significative for SHiP.
We present the first study of the production of a Standard Model Higgs boson at a lepton collider in association with a pair of W bosons, $e^+_{} e^-_{} \to W^+_{} W^-_{} H$, in the inverse seesaw model. Taking into account all relevant experimental and theoretical constraints, we find sizable effects due to the additional heavy neutrinos up to -38% on the total cross-section at a center-of-mass energy of 3 TeV, and even up to -66% with suitable cuts. This motivates a detailed sensitivity analysis of the process $e^+_{} e^-_{} \to W^+_{} W^-_{} H$ as it could provide a new, very competitive ex…
Heavy Neutral Leptons (HNLs) are hypothetical particles predicted by many extensions of the Standard Model. These particles can, among other things, explain the origin of neutrino masses, generate the observed matter-antimatter asymmetry in the Universe and provide a dark matter candidate. The SHiP experiment will be able to search for HNLs produced in decays of heavy mesons and travelling distances ranging between $\mathcal{O}(50\text{ m})$ and tens of kilometers before decaying. We present the sensitivity of the SHiP experiment to a number of HNL's benchmark models and provide a way to calcu…
We study the LHC discovery potential in the search for heavy neutral leptons (HNL) with a new signature: a displaced shower in the CMS muon detector, giving rise to a large cluster of hits forming a displaced shower. A new Delphes module is used to model the CMS detector response for such displaced decays. We reinterpret a dedicated CMS search for neutral long-lived particles decaying in the CMS muon endcap detectors for the minimal HNL scenario. We demonstrate that this new strategy is particularly sensitive to active-sterile mixings with $τ$ leptons, due to hadronic $τ$ decays. HNL masses be…
We point out how future lepton colliders can provide unique insight into the scalar sector of TeV scale models for neutrino masses with local $B-L$ symmetry. Our specific focus is on the TeV scale left-right model, which naturally embeds this $B-L$ symmetry. In particular, we make a detailed study of the lepton collider implications of the neutral ($H_3$) and doubly-charged ($H^{\pm\pm}$) scalars from the right-handed triplet Higgs that is responsible for the spontaneous breaking of the $B-L$ symmetry and implementing the seesaw mechanism. Due to mixing with other scalars, the neutral scalar $…
We introduce DarkNews, a lightweight Python-based Monte-Carlo generator for beyond-the-Standard-Model neutrino-nucleus scattering. The generator handles the production and decay of heavy neutral leptons via additional vector or scalar mediators, as well as through transition magnetic moments. DarkNews samples pre-computed neutrino-nucleus upscattering cross sections and heavy neutrino decay rates to produce dilepton and single-photon events in accelerator neutrino experiments. We present two case studies with differential distributions for models that can explain the MiniBooNE excess. The aim …
The sensitivity of beam dump experiments to heavy neutral leptons depends on the relative strength of their couplings to individual lepton flavours in the Standard Model. We study the impact of present neutrino oscillation data on these couplings in the minimal type I seesaw model and find that it significantly constrains the allowed heavy neutrino flavour mixing patterns. We estimate the effect that the DUNE experiment will have on these predictions. We then discuss implication that this has for the sensitivity of the NA62 experiment when operated in the beam dump mode and provide sensitivity…
The following proceedings contain a theory perspective on the flavor changing neutral current anomalies reported by LHCb on the ratios $B\to K^{(*)} μμ/B\to K^{(*)} ee$
Many extensions of the Standard Model include extra fermions. We here consider a model containing Dirac neutral heavy leptons in addition to massless neutrinos. These neutral heavy leptons can be produced singly along with a massless neutrino in $e^+ e^-$ and $μ^+ μ^-$ collisions. The production rates depend on the neutral heavy lepton masses and mixing parameters. We here consider the rates for this process and potential signatures for the machine energies and luminosities suggested for the Snowmass study.
Heavy neutral leptons (HNLs) appear in many extensions of the Standard Model of particle physics. In this study, we investigate to which extent the NA62 experiment at CERN could improve the existing bounds on the HNL mixing angle $|U_e|^2$ by performing a missing mass search in $K^+ \to π^0 e^+ N$ decays in flight. We show that the limit $|U_e|^2 \simeq 2\times 10^{-6}$ can be reached with the currently available data in the mass range 125 -- 144 MeV, which is currently not well covered by production searches. Future data, together with a dedicated trigger and/or improvements in rejection of o…
Naturally small neutrino masses can arise in some grand unified models. The mechanism of neutrino mass generation in these models typically requires the existence of neutral heavy leptons. We study the low-energy phenomenology of these new fermions. Concentrating on loop corrections due to neutral heavy leptons, we examine how the flavour-conserving leptonic decays of the Z boson, universality breaking in these decays, and the W boson mass depend on the mass and mixings of the neutral heavy leptons. Working within the framework of a superstring-inspired SU(2)_L x U(1)_Y model, we show that the…
The highly successful Standard Model is not complete. It does not explain the baryonic asymmetry in the Universe, the existence of dark matter or the non-zero masses of the neutrinos. Extensions of the Standard Model that propose the existence of additional Heavy Neutral Leptons (HNLs) are well-motivated and can explain several of these phenomena. In addition, light sterile neutrinos of $\mathcal{O}(\text{eV}/c^{2})$ can explain experimentally observed oscillation anomalies. The Neutrino Minimal Standard Model proposes HNLs with masses $\mathcal{O}(\text{keV}/c^{2} - \text{GeV}/c^{2})$, while …
We consider generic neutrino dipole portals between left-handed neutrinos, photons, and right-handed heavy neutral leptons (HNL) with Dirac masses. The dominance of this portal significantly alters the conventional phenomenology of HNLs. We derive a comprehensive set of constraints on the dipole portal to HNLs by utilizing data from LEP, LHC, MiniBooNE, LSND as well as observations of Supernova 1987A and consistency of the standard Big Bang Nucleosynthesis. We calculate projected sensitivities from the proposed high-intensity SHiP beam dump experiment, and the ongoing experiments at the Short-…
The inclusion of heavy neutral leptons to the Standard Model particle content could provide solutions to many open questions in particle physics and cosmology. The modification of the charged and neutral currents from active-sterile mixing of neutral leptons can provide novel signatures in Standard Model processes. We revisit the displaced vertex signature that could occur in collisions at the LHC via the decay of heavy neutral leptons with masses of a few GeV emphasizing the implications of flavor, kinematics, inclusive production and number of these extra neutral fermions. We study in partic…
We investigate the potentials of high energy lepton-proton colliders to detect a flavor changing $l-l^{\prime}-Z$ or $l-l^{\prime}-γ$ couplings from the processes $ep\toμ(τ)X$ and $μp\to τX$. For the $l-l^{\prime}-Z$ coupling we consider string inspired $E_6$ model whereas $l-l^{\prime}-γ$ coupling is analyzed in the framework of anomalous magnetic moment type interaction (AMMI) model.
The article reviews the conditions for lepton-flavor conservation in leptonic interactions. The conditions are similar to those developed in the quark sector. For neutrinos the mass eigenstates are unitary superpositions of flavor states which together with small mass differences produce neutrino oscillations. A new property for neutrinos is the fact that their masses are very small suppressing their couplings to neutral scalar fields. The results are demonstrated in several models.
The $O(α)$ leptonic QED corrections to neutral current polarized deep inelastic lepton-nucleon scattering are calculated in leptonic variables both for the case of longitudinal and transverse nucleon polarization. The results of the complete calculation are compared with the corresponding leading log expressions. Numerical results are presented for the corrections in the kinematic range of the HERMES experiment and possible future polarized proton beam experiments at HERA.
The sensitivity of direct searches for heavy neutral leptons (HNLs) in accelerator-based experiments depends strongly on the particles properties. Commonly used benchmark scenarios are important to ensure comparability and consistency between experimental searches, re-interpretations, and sensitivity studies at different facilities. In models where the HNLs are primarily produced and decay through the weak interaction, benchmarks are in particular defined by fixing relative strengths of their mixing with SM neutrinos of different flavours, and the interpretation of experimental data is known t…
Yukawa Institute for Theoretical Physics, Kyoto University（京都大学汤川理论物理研究所）；Northwestern University（西北大学）；Argonne National Laboratory（阿贡国家实验室）；Asia Pacific Center for Theoretical Physics（亚太理论物理中心）；Pohang University of Science and Technology（韩国科学技术院）
We investigate the possibility that baryogenesis occurs during the weak phase transition in a minimal extension of the Standard Model which contains extra neutral leptons and conserves total lepton number. The necessary CP-violating phases appear in the leptonic Yukawa couplings. We compute the CP-asymmetries in both the neutral and the charged lepton fluxes reflected on the bubble wall. Using present experimental bounds on the mixing angles and Standard Model estimates for the parameters related to the scalar potential, we conclude that it seems unlikely to produce the observed baryon to entr…
The one loop contribution to the lepton flavor violating decay $h^0\rightarrow μτ$ of the SM-like neutral Higgs (LFVHD) in the 3-3-1 model with neutral lepton is calculated using the unitary gauge. We have checked in detail that the total contribution is exactly finite, and the divergent cancellations happen separately in two parts of active neutrinos and exotic heavy leptons. By numerical investigation, we have indicated that the one-loop contribution of the active neutrinos is very suppressed while that of exotic leptons is rather large. The branching ratio of the LFVHD strongly depends on t…
We study the prospects for discovering heavy neutral leptons at ForwArd Search ExpeRiment (FASER), the newly proposed detector at the LHC. Previous studies showed that a relatively small detector with ~10 m length and ~1 m cross sectional area can probe large unconstrained parts of parameter space for dark photons and dark Higgs bosons. In this work we show that FASER will also be sensitive to heavy neutral leptons that have mixing angles with the active neutrinos that are up to an order of magnitude lower than current bounds. In particular, this is true for heavy neutral leptons produced domi…
The existence of non-zero neutrino masses points to the likely existence of multiple SM neutral fermions. When such states are heavy enough that they cannot be produced in oscillations, they are referred to as Heavy Neutral Leptons (HNLs). In this white paper we discuss the present experimental status of HNLs including colliders, beta decay, accelerators, as well as astrophysical and cosmological impacts. We discuss the importance of continuing to search for HNLs, and its potential impact on our understanding on key fundamental questions, and additionally we outline the future prospects for ne…
Small neutrino masses can arise in some grand unified models or superstring theories. We consider a model with an enhanced fermion sector containing Dirac neutral heavy leptons. The dependence on the mass and mixing parameters of these new fermions is investigated for several measurable quantities. We study the flavor-conserving leptonic decays of the Z boson and universality breaking in these decays. We also consider the W boson mass dependence on neutral heavy lepton parameters.
Interest in searches for heavy neutral leptons (HNLs) at the LHC has increased considerably in the past few years. In the minimal scenario, HNLs are produced and decay via their mixing with active neutrinos in the Standard Model (SM) spectrum. However, many SM extensions with HNLs have been discussed in the literature, which sometimes change expectations for LHC sensitivities drastically. In the $N_R$SMEFT, one extends the SM effective field theory with operators including SM singlet fermions, which allows to study HNL phenomenology in a "model independent" way. In this paper, we study the sen…
In the first part of this thesis, we consider an extension to the Standard Model composed by a Massive Vector Doublet under SU(2)L and a Left-handed Heavy Neutral Lepton. We study the production of these exotic leptons with a Same Flavor Opposite Sign standard lepton pair, and jets. We establish limits on the parameter space considering previous searches in this final state. After the limit definition, we study a modification on the event selection criteria in order to increase the possibility of probing these new particles at the Large Hadron Collider. Finally, we perform a parameter scan con…
We point out the importance of two-body final states of weak isosinglet neutral heavy leptons predicted in several models of new physics beyond the standard model. We concentrate on muon-type neutral heavy leptons $L_μ^0$ with mass $M<2$ GeV which can be searched for with increased sensitivity at a new round of neutrino experiments at CERN and Fermilab. Providing explicit decay rate formulae for the $e e ν$, $eμν$, $μμν$, $πμ$, $ρμ$, and $a_1μ$ final states, we use general scaling features to estimate sensitivity of $L_μ^0$ searches in current and future experiments, emphasizing the importance…
The presence of the top-pions $π_{t}^{0,\pm}$ in the low-energy spectrum is an inevitable feature of the topcolor scenario. Taking into account the constraints of the present experimental limit of the lepton flavor violating($LFV$) process $μ\to eγ$ on the free parameters of topcolor-assisted techicolor(TC2) models, we study the contributions of the neutral top-pion $π^{0}_{t}$ to the $LFV$ processes $μ^{+}μ^{-}\toτμ$ (or $τe$), $ γγ\toτμ$ (or $τe$), $e^{+} e^{-}\toτμ$, and $e γ\to e π_{t}^{0}\to e τμ(e)$ via the flavor changing ($FC$) couplings $π_{t}^{0}l_{i}l_{j}$ and discuss the possibilit…
Heavy neutral leptons ($N$) below the kaon mass are severely constrained by cosmology and lab-based searches for their decays in flight. If $N$ interacts via an additional force, $N\toνe^+e^-$ decays are enhanced and cosmological limits can be avoided. We show that the T2K and MicroBooNE neutrino experiments provide the best limits on the mixing of $N$ with muon-neutrinos, outperforming past-generation experiments, previously thought to dominate. We constrain models with electromagnetically-decaying and long-lived $N$, such as in a transition-magnetic-moment portal and in a leptophilic axion-l…
We analyze the potential of the recently proposed experiment FACET (Forward-Aperture CMS ExTension) to search for new physics. As an example, we consider the models of Higgs-like scalars with cubic and quartic interactions and Heavy Neutral Leptons. We compare the sensitivity of FACET with that of other proposed "intensity frontier" experiments, including FASER2, SHiP, etc. and demonstrate that FACET could probe an interesting parameter space between the current constraints and the potential reach of the above mentioned proposals.
