Hunting for sterile neutrino with collider signatures

Author:

Hao Yang, Bingwei Long, Cong-Feng Qiao

Keyword:

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology, High Energy Physics - Phenomenology (hep-ph)

journal:

date:

2023-09-27 16:00:00

Abstract

We study the feasibility to observe sterile neutrino at the high energy colliders, using direct production channels $e^+e^-\to\bar{\nu}_e N,\ e^-\gamma \to NW^-$ and indirect production channels through heavy meson/baryon and Higgs decay. We thus cover a mass window that is between what can be studied in heavy hadron factories and high energy colliders. For $e^+e^-\to\bar{\nu}_e N$ channel, the sensitivity of active-sterile mixing $|U_{eN}|^2$ in the lower mass end (0.3$\sim 2$ GeV) could be $10^{-6}$ at the SuperKEKB under its operation with designed luminosity, the sensitivity for hundreds GeV region can be further extended to $10^{-7}$ at the CEPC and the ILC. We also explore the heavy sterile neutrino production through $e^-\gamma \to NW^-$ channel at the ep collider, the mixing $|U_{eN}|^2$ is estimated to reach a sensitivity of $10^{-4}$ at the LHeC if $m_N$ to be electroweak energy mass scale, which can shed light on sterile neutrino searching at this mass region. For heavy hadron decay, the lepton-number-violating process in $|\Delta L|=2$ decays of $\Lambda_c, \Xi_{c}, \Xi_{cc}$ and $\Lambda_b$ are explored via an intermediate on-shell Majorana neutrino in GeV scale. The branching fractions and the lower-limit on $|U_{\ell N}|^2$ versus $m_N$ are given. The $Higgs \to W\mu\mu\pi$ channel is also considered, which is sensitive at lower mass scale.

PDF: Hunting for sterile neutrino with collider signatures.pdf